Very Pleased with this. They were on the hook for 5.5 mil this year anyway. Take the shot at getting him signed early.
Very Pleased with this. They were on the hook for 5.5 mil this year anyway. Take the shot at getting him signed early.
Steeler teams featuring stat-driven, me-first, fantasy-football-darling diva types such as Antonio Brown & Le'Veon Bell won no championships.
Super Bowl winning Steeler teams were built around a dynamic, in-your-face defense plus blue-collar, hard-hitting, no-nonsense football players on offense such as Hines Ward & Jerome Bettis.
We don't want Juju & Conner to replace what we lost in Brown & Bell.
We are counting on Juju & Conner to return us to the glory we once had with Hines & The Bus.
This deal actually reduces Pouncey's cap hit for this season by about $2 million. The Steelers can either use the money from Pouncey this year on another extension (perhaps Cortez Allen) or roll it forward next year. Edit - Bouchette reported that, but I'm now seeing reports that there is little impact, if any, on the 2014 cap. Maybe an extra $500k of cap space.
This deal is about what I was expecting. As with probably every extension or signing, I wish it was a bit more team friendly, but as Ruthless pointed out, the signing bonus is not so big that the Steelers can't move on, if necessary.
What I think is most important about this signing is that it's a return to the way that the Steelers built their successful teams. First round picks were starters for a decade. With both Mendenhall and Ziggy Hood departing in back to back years, the Steelers had more holes to fill in this year. Hitting on first rounders and locking them up is essential to long term success.
If you'd like to compare, here are the top 10 centers by salary cap hit in 2014 (sportrac.com)
1. A. Mack - $10
2. R. Kalil - $7.284
3. N. Mangold - $7.227
4. C. Myers - $7
5. N. Hardwick - $6.15
6. M. Unger - $6.1
7. E. Wood - $5.95
8. M. Pouncey -$5.514 (before today obviously)
9. J. Sullican - $4.75
10. S. Wells -$4.287
I'm shocked.. shocked I tell you.
Don"t like it!! This is Woodley all over again. I thought we had learned a lesson with the over the top contracts that you get stuck with. Instead of pissing away 3rd round choices every year, I would have resigned Velasco for one more year and drafted a good one in the 3rd in 2014. Not Happy!!!!
They are signing (core) star players to market contracts and avoiding huge guarantees....Khan and Colbert are doing work.
Woodley flopped but overpaying Timmons and Brown worked out. Hell they over paid Ike to keep him and he took a $5 million pay cut to stay on the team
This is a very friendly deal despit the big scary number of $8.8 million per year...its not as cut and dry as dividing 44 by 5
Velasco hasn't signed anywhere yet, because he cannot pass a physical yet. And the centers who were available where we picked at the end of round 3 were Florida State's Bryan Stork and or North Carolina's Russell Bodine. Good luck with that. I'll take Dri Archer running behind Maurkice Pouncey instead, thank you very much.
Steeler teams featuring stat-driven, me-first, fantasy-football-darling diva types such as Antonio Brown & Le'Veon Bell won no championships.
Super Bowl winning Steeler teams were built around a dynamic, in-your-face defense plus blue-collar, hard-hitting, no-nonsense football players on offense such as Hines Ward & Jerome Bettis.
We don't want Juju & Conner to replace what we lost in Brown & Bell.
We are counting on Juju & Conner to return us to the glory we once had with Hines & The Bus.
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