On Thursday, MDS pointed out that the Steelers have begun chipping away at a $25 million cap bulge by restructuring the contracts of linebackers LaMarr Woodley and Lawrence Timmons.
A league source has supplied the specifics to PFT.
As to Woodley, his 2012 cap number has dropped from $11.5 million to $4.94 million, creating $6.56 million in cap room. The move results from the conversion of a combined base salary and roster bonus of $8.9 million into a $700,000 base salary and an $8.2 million signing bonus.
The simple restructuring pushes the extra $6.56 million into the final four years of the contract, at a rate of $1.64 million extra per year.
For Timmons, his cap number of $9.125 million drops to $3.985 million, creating $5.14 million in cap space. The extra money comes from the conversion of $7.125 million in salary and roster bonus into a salary of $700,000 and a signing bonus of $6.425 million. It results in an extra $1.285 million being charged under Timmons’ name in the final four years of his contract.
It’s unclear at this point what else the Steelers will do to get under the cap. But they need to be there by the start of the league year on March 13. With these two restructurings, the Steelers pushed $11.7 million in current cap space into future years.