The Pittsburgh Steelers are in really rough shape heading into the offseason in terms of cap space. In fact, until Antonio Brown re-worked his contract on Wednesday, the franchise didn’t have the cap space to sign Le’Veon Bell to his franchise tag.
Brown posted a video of himself signing a new deal that fully guarantees his 2018 salary while creating necessary space for Pittsburgh to sign Bell.
#Steelers WR Antonio Brown posted on his Instagram stories that he has restructured his contract, fully guaranteeing his 2018 salary to create cap space for the team. pic.twitter.com/HfdTz0sJZB
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) March 7, 2018
As noted by Ian Rapoport of NFL Media, the restructure converts his base pay to bonus, which opens up the room needed to fit Bell’s $14.5 million contract into the team’s cap.
#Steelers WR Antonio Brown completes a base to bonus restructure to create cap space for the Le’Veon Bell franchise tag, as agent @RosenhausSports explains the situation to him. https://t.co/zTRe5GDpJt
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) March 7, 2018
This won’t be the last move the Steelers make to creatively carve out more cap space. A couple of the team’s veterans recently re-worked their contracts as well, which saved the team over $13 million. These moves are exceptionally important because both Pittsburgh and Bell would rather do a long-term deal that finally puts their contract dispute in the rear-view mirror.
At this point, without a long-term deal in place ahead of the July deadline, Bell has made it clear he’s going to hold out of training camp, at the least.