PITTSBURGH – Ben Roethlisberger wants to return to the Pittsburgh Steelers for the 2021 season, team president Art Rooney II said on Thursday, but to make that happen, the team and its veteran eighth man have to make difficult decisions.
With the falling salary cap due to a drop in revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Roethlisberger’s $ 41.2 million cap for 2021 is unsustainable, Rooney said.
“Ben wants to come back,” he said during his season finale. “We left that door open.
‘I think we were with Ben beforehand to let him know that we would not be able to return him under the current contract. I think he understands that we still need to do some work there. We’ll have more conversations internally, and we’ll talk to Ben more, and we’ll need to know the maximum number to make some of these decisions. ‘
After losing game card to the Cleveland Browns, Roethlisberger, 38, said he would talk to his family before making a concrete decision to return for 2021, but he hopes the Steelers want him back if it is what he decides to do. But will Rooney and the team offer him the opportunity to write his own career?
“With Ben, we owe it to him to have a conversation about how he wants to end his career, and we plan to do that.”
To secure the cap relief and give Roethlisberger at least one more season to end on his own terms, the Steelers could ask the quarterback to take a salary cut in the final year of his contract. The Steelers have already paid $ 22,250,000 from his contract, leaving only $ 19 million – $ 4 million in base salary and a $ 15 million roster bonus – to work on in a pay cut or restructuring. The more likely option is an expansion and restructuring that will spread some of the pepper price in the 2022 season.
“I think these are discussions we will have with Ben and his representative,” Rooney said of the possibility of massaging Roethlisberger’s contract. ‘It takes two to figure it out and whether we can agree on what he wants. We’ll just have to see. ‘
As it stands now, the Steelers have three backs in the rankings for the 2021 season: Roethlisberger, Mason Rudolph and the newly signed Dwayne Haskins. But Rooney has admitted that they need to add another signal caller, possibly putting it in the lottery for one of the available big-name full-backs if they can accommodate the hood.
“I think if you look at our room, we’ll have to add someone to the room out of season,” Rooney said. “We will look at all the opportunities we have to do that.”
Determining the future of Roethlisberger is just the first step in many difficult decisions and discussions for the Steelers this off-season.
General manager Kevin Colbert’s year-on-year contract will be available after the draft, and although Rooney said the two have already had many discussions about Colbert’s future, nothing is official.
“I feel like Kevin’s coming back, but who knows,” Rooney said.
Coach Mike Tomlin’s contract lasts at least through the 2021 season with an option for the 2022 season, and during the evaluation of his head coach, Rooney said he believes Tomlin will lead the team in the future.
“We will address Mike’s contract with him as the off-season progresses,” he said. “I will just say that I feel comfortable saying that he will be our coach in the future. … As for the job, we did not finish as we wanted. The play-off match, it is difficult to analyze. “To turn the ball around just like that, you are not going to win many games. I can not see how you attribute that to coaching preparation. I think the team went into that game prepared.”
Rooney also said that if it all belonged to him, he would go into the 2021 season with the same roster the team had in 2020.
“If I had my druthers, I would say I could have the same roster next year, I would do it,” he said. “That, of course, is not the case.”
With the team’s salary cap situation – according to ESPN’s Steel Roster Management System – the Steelers are estimated to be close to $ 30 million with 48 players, it will be difficult to sign free agents like Bud Dupree and JuJu Smith-Schuster. if not nearly impossible.
“It’s fair to say that this is the toughest salary challenge we’ve had in a long time, maybe ever,” Rooney said.
But the first step in figuring out the rest of the roster is to determine Roethlisberger’s future.
Asked directly if he wanted Roethlisberger to return, Rooney paused and said he wanted him back, but he offered no guarantees about the future of the quarterback.
“I think we’d like to see Ben for another year if that can work,” he said. “But as we have said, there is a lot of work to be done if that can happen; decisions may have to be made on both sides to make it happen.”