Two days before the Pittsburgh Steelers’ first preseason game of the 2025 NFL season, insider Adam Schefter dropped the news that Steelers DT Cam Heyward wants to work on his contract. That, in of itself, is not a huge problem. Players want to redo their contracts all the time in the NFL. The problem for the Steelers is that they signed Heyward to a three-year contract extension last year. And the Steelers don’t negotiate new deals with players who have more than one year remaining on their deal, other than quarterbacks.
So what does that mean for Cam Heyward? Will the Steelers bend their own rules for a player like him?
“Are you ripping it up, saying, okay, the only people we do with more than two years out are quarterback and Cam Heyward?” Insider Mark Kaboly said Saturday on the Kaboly + Mack show. “I just think that’s a path they don’t want to go down… They’ll find a way to pay him without losing their credibility.”
The Steelers find themselves in a tough spot. Agents and players know that the Steelers have a hard and fast rule about negotiating contracts with players other than quarterbacks. We’ll talk contract extensions if you’re entering the final year of your current contract. If you aren’t, we’ll file it away until it’s time.
And, if you’re focusing on specific aspects of the Cam Heyward situation, that’s exactly what this looks like. After all, doesn’t Heyward have two years remaining on his contract? Technically, yes. But also, the only real guaranteed difference in Heyward’s new deal was that the Steelers took most of his 2024 salary and turned it into a signing bonus, effectively guaranteeing his entire salary for the year.
Everything else in the contract, the new years added to the deal, was essentially window dressing. Heyward didn’t make any more money in 2024 than his original salary. It was simply guaranteed. Steelers Depot’s Dave Bryan did an excellent breakdown of this in his piece on how to make a deal work for Heyward (and K Chris Boswell).
And it’s in that bit of information that gives general manager Omar Khan and the Steelers the needed wiggle room. While Heyward technically has two years remaining on his contract under the new deal, there is nothing guaranteed. And he hasn’t made any additional money on the new contract yet.
There is also historical precedent for the Steelers doing this. You’ve got to go back into the archives a bit to find it, though. Nine years ago, the Steelers re-did WR Antonio Brown’s contract two years in a row. The situation was slightly different because the Steelers had previously moved base salary forward. But it illustrates that the Steelers have worked around their own internal rules to make things happen for a star player.
How will the Steelers make this work in Cam Heyward’s situation? Dave Bryan thinks the Steelers could take half of Heyward’s 2026 roster bonus ($12.95 million due next March) and bring it forward as a signing bonus this year. Or they could simply guarantee that now, ensuring he’ll earn that money next year.
The point is this: The Steelers do not want to break their long-standing contract negotiation rules. They also want to take care of Cam Heyward. And there are ways for them to do this while still abiding by the letter of the rules. After all, Heyward is a franchise icon.
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