AB to Oakland (and a look at the Steelers)
Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2019 12:54 pm
This was a really interesting article from Bill Barnwell. Particularly about how the Steelers structure contracts differently than everyone else and how it's starting to cost them their best players. We all know how frustrating Brown can be, but he doesn't have a monopoly on cheap, stubborn thinking.
The highlights:
The highlights:
I'm not sure there has been a swap like this in recent memory, in which a superstar player on a veteran deal was dealt away in the prime of his career without offering his team any sort of salary-cap savings.
Instead, the Steelers have a policy of guaranteeing only the bonuses in the first year of their deals. Cameron Heyward's deal has $15 million guaranteed, with a $12 million signing bonus and a $3 million roster bonus paid in Year 1, but nothing else afterward. Elite guard David DeCastro has a $16 million guarantee, all of which is in his signing bonus. Even Roethlisberger's most recent extension consists of a $31 million signing bonus with no other guarantees, although the veteran quarterback did get partial guarantees for injury only in Years 2 and 3.
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/2618 ... aiders-wonIt's one of the same reasons why they weren't able to come to terms with Le'Veon Bell, who says the Steelers offered him only $17 million guaranteed as part of a five-year, $70 million deal. That contractual policy is going to cost the team both of its star weapons in the same offseason, and its cap philosophy is going to make it feel the pain of that decision in one of the final seasons of Roethlisberger's career.
touché