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The Steelers want Ben. Ben wants the Steelers. The Steelers need to review Ben’s contract. Ben is willing to do that.
But it hasn’t been done yet.
Although Steelers President Art Rooney II recently told Steelers.com that the deadline for closing a revised deal is March 17, Rooney has not publicly said whether Steelers intends to pay its long-time quarterback $ 19 millions he is expected to earn in 2021, through a restructuring that lowers his ceiling, or if the Steelers are trying to get Ben Roethlisberger to comply with his recent statement “I don’t care about my payment this year”.
Roethlisberger’s team also doesn’t say whether the Steelers are trying to get Ben to receive less. But why shouldn’t the Steelers try at least?
Ben counts $ 22.25 million against the limit, whether he’s on the team or not in 2021. Anything he wins increases that amount. The $ 19 million he is currently earning puts him at a limit of $ 41.25 million. A restructuring that would be triggered by lowering his pay to the minimum base salary of $ 1.075 million with $ 18.925 million converted into a subscription bonus would place the 2021 cap in the 20s, with the final number depending on the new years added to the business for the purpose of distributing the subscription bonus allocation.
Cutting your payment could make it even lower than that, obviously. Until Steelers and Roethlisberger make a new deal that implies that Roethlisberger makes $ 19 million this year, the possibility that the Steelers will try to make him earn less is big.
In addition to playing with your obvious desire to have a sufficient limit to allow the team to place competent teammates around you, there is a more pragmatic question to ask: would another team pay him $ 19 million this year, if he were one free agent?
Regardless of whether Ben plays for someone else, the question is whether someone else would offer him $ 19 million to play for that team. If the answer is no, then it might be fair for the Steelers to want him to take less.
Again, this whole issue is eliminated with a new contract that preserves its compensation package for 2021. Until then, it is fair to imagine if something else is going on between the Steelers and a quarterback who turns 39 in three days.