The Steelers re-signed veteran free agent safety Will Allen on Wednesday, but the contract details were not available.  According to reports, his deal was indeed what I expected, a one year dear for the veteran minimum, with no signing bonus. The minimum for Allen this year is $955,000.

Knowing this, I can give you a pretty accurate update on the Steelers salary cap situation. Allen’s $955,000 base salary will displace $420,000 from the current Top 51, making his signing effectively count for only $535,000. Factoring that in to the numbers I provided yesterday after the restructure of Antonio Brown, the Steelers should have a hair under $2.5 Mil in available cap space at the time of this writing.

Going into free agency, the team is going to want to have more money to play with than that. As you’d expect, we should be hearing news on Ike Taylor very soon. Either a reduction in his 2014 salary, or his release. I would imagine he will agree to some form of contract renegotiation that frees up a minimum somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 Mil. The restructure of Lawrence Timmons’ contract is also an easy option for the team to clear more cap space. While they may go for a full restructure to free up almost $4 Mil, I’m expecting that they won’t want to do that right now.