Not extending Minkah Fitzpatrick was never an option for Steelers

There has been some debate as to whether extending Minkah Fitzpatrick was the right move. Here’s why it was the only real option for the Steelers.

You might have seen the latest Colin Cowherd video floating around by now. After the Pittsburgh Steelers made Minkah Fitzpatrick the highest-paid safety in the NFL, Cowherd had a lot to say on his show The Herd.

While he acknowledged that Fitzpatrick is a terrific football player, he was very vocal that safeties should not be paid a lot of money. Cowherd made the argument that the Steelers now have the most expensive defense in the NFL following Fitzpatrick’s extension — a defense that ranked just 24th in the league last year.

Cowherd continued to argue that the Steelers shouldn’t be forking up money to players not named T.J. Watt on defense. Instead, in today’s changing league centered around offense, they need to invest more on the opposite side of the football, as Pittsburgh currently has the smallest payroll for their offense in the NFL.

I get where Cowherd is coming from, and for the most part, I agree with what he said. The standard shouldn’t be to try to have another non-losing season, it should be to make some serious changes that could turn this team around to become Super Bowl competitors in the near future.

But was not extending Minkah Fitzpatrick’s contract ever an option?

Steelers needed to pay Fitzpatrick

Regardless of your stance on paying elite money to safeties or where you would rank Fitzpatrick among the best players in the league at his position, paying him was something that absolutely needed to be done — of this I feel very confident.

Let’s take a moment to look at the alternatives. If the Steelers didn’t extend Fitzpatrick’s contract, they essentially have two choices following the 2022 season: they could slap the franchise tag on him or let him walk in free agency.

Using the franchise tag on a player would have lowered his salary by a few million, but it’s not a long-term fix and it’s normally terrible for moral purposes between the player and his agent and the team. While Minkah would have been obligated to play one more season in 2023, the Steelers would be looking for another free safety to fill his shoes — likely with elite draft capital in the 2024 NFL Draft.

Letting him walk in free agency would also prove to be disastrous. While gaining a compensatory third-round pick from his departure sounds alright in theory, this certainly isn’t guaranteed to happen. With all of their extra cap space, if Pittsburgh signed someone in free agency to a similar contract to what Minkah would receive, they could essentially get nothing in return, as this would wipe out the compensatory formula.

It’s not like the Steelers are scrapping for money either. According to Over the Cap, they are set to have the sixth-most cap space in the NFL next offseason with over $40 million. This is after already factoring in Fitzpatrick’s massive new deal that locks him up through the 2026 season. How much more do they need?

The fact of the matter is that teams typically don’t let their young, multiple-time All-Pro players hit the market very often… and they shouldn’t. Though people like to throw out their two cents, not extending Minkah Fitzpatrick’s contract was never even an option for the Pittsburgh Steelers.