Too much money
I know how the salary cap works. The $41.25 million isn’t how much Roethlisberger is earning in 2020, rather he is set to earn just $19 million of that. However, people forget about the contract restructure and what he has already made under his most recent extension.
When it’s all said and done, Ben Roethlisberger will be earning $34.0 million per season from 2019 to 2021 (assuming he plays this year). This makes him the 4th-highest-paid player in the National Football League in terms of yearly value, and thanks to a restructure, he has the single highest cap charge in the league this year.
Even when the Steelers offered him this extension when he was two years younger, we knew that by doing so, they were overpaying for his past accomplishments – not the player they thought he would be in the future. Now, the money situation is really coming back to haunt Pittsburgh, and they could be losing upwards of a dozen unrestricted free agents to opposing teams this offseason. Ben hasn’t been worth half of the contract extension he signed, and we are starting to feel the effects of this bad deal.