The Steelers are active early in the free agency period, releasing Anthony Chickillo, Mark Barron and Johnny Holton and franchise-tagging Bud Dupree.
In addition, Ramon Foster announced his retirement Monday afternoon on Instagram. All these deals considered, the Steelers shaved $15.1 million off their salary cap, but they still had work to do to get under the 2020 cap of $198.2 million.
They did that Monday night, restructuring the deals of Vance McDonald, Chris Boswell and Joe Haden for savings of just over $6 million.
Per Adam Caplan, the next move is in the books, as McDonald agreed to restructure his deal, converting his $5.5 million base salary into a signing bonus for 2020. That move will cut his cap hit from $7.1 million to $4.7 million and some change, a savings of about $2.3 million for the Steelers.
Source: #steelers are restructuring deals in order to create salary cap space.
Latest is TE Vance McDonald. He agreed to convert his $5.5m base salary to signing bonus.
— Adam Caplan (@caplannfl) March 16, 2020
With the move, McDonald will now make a veteran minimum base salary plus his inflated signing bonus, giving him the same amount of money as originally planned, just in a different fashion to help the team.
The next step for McDonald is to help the team on the field in 2020.
In 2019, McDonald appeared in 14 games, catching 38 passes for 273 yards and three touchdowns on an anemic Steelers offense led by Mason Rudolph and Devlin "Duck" Hodges. One year prior, in 2018, McDonald caught 50 passes for 610 yards and four touchdowns with Ben Roethlisberger under center.
With Roethlisberger's return, McDonald, 29, could be in for a bounce-back year of his own.
And speaking of bounce-back years, Chris Boswell agreed to restructure his contract as well (on his birthday, no less) per Caplan:
Another #Steelers player agreed to restructure his contract to help team create cap space: K Chris Boswell, source said.
— Adam Caplan (@caplannfl) March 17, 2020
Boswell's restructure saves approximately $1 million in cap space. Boswell was due for a $3.575 million hit in 2020. This comes due to a five-year, $19.72 million extension Boswell signed with the Steelers after a stellar, Pro Bowl 2017 campaign.
Then Boswell worried Steelers fans across the globe in 2018, making just 65 percent of his field-goal attempts (13 for 20) and also missing five extra points (43 for 48). It was the worst season of Boswell's career, but he proved it was a fluke, coming back in 2019 for his best season yet, making 93.5 percent (29 for 31) of his kicks and all 28 attempted extra points.
Haden, who signed a three-year extension with the Steelers prior to last season, cleared just under $3 million in cap space by restructuring his deal.
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