Around The AFCN: Pittsburgh Steelers Restructured Your Contract Too

The Pittsburgh Steelers are old with a handful of younger players being forced into contract negotiations, just to give Pittsburgh breathing room under the salary cap. And boy are they.

Wide receiver Antonio Brown restructured his deal worth $43.04 million (aka, the "we moved on from you Mike Wallace" contract), converting all but his $650,000 salary into his signing bonus and giving Pittsburgh $3.08 million in cap space. Linebacker Lawrence Timmons restructured his contract to give Pittsburgh another $5 million in cap space, with speculation that his salary in 2013 is roughly the league minimum while the $5.375 million he was due will be prorated over the life of the contract.

Linebacker LaMarr Woodley, who one Steelers teammate ripped for having a questionable work ethic, plans to restructure his deal, which includes $9 million in base salary in 2013. Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is expected to do the same, considering he sports a $19.595 million cap hit next season.

The Pittsburgh Steelers select No. 17 in the first round of the 2013 with mock drafts ranging from a defensive tackle, defensive end, wide receiver and tight end.

As a sidenote, while reading this BehindTheSteelCurtain.com posting, this comment really stood out when analyzing the phrase, "the Steelers way."

This is a football team, made by football players and owners, and gurus trying to build a football team that wins. There is no magical morally superior method that they employ to always win. When we don’t win, it isn’t because we violated some code of moral conduct that then cursed us into losing.

We had a bad year because you can’t just replace James Farrior and Hines Ward’s locker room leadership by wanting to, and if young players could be better just by wanting too we wouldn’t still be waiting for the next Faneca or Rod Woodson.