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Same Old Steelers In FA? No Chance | Steelers Morning Rush
Welcome to Steelers Morning Rush, our new daily short-form podcast with Alan Saunders, giving a longer perspective on a single news topic surrounding the Pittsburgh Steelers or the National Football League. Today, it’s how active to expect general manager Omar Khan to be when free agency opens on Monday.
The Steelers have over $63 million in offseason salary cap space available, and have the ability to make plenty more than that if they want to, through releases, restructures and an extension for T.J. Watt. They also have to spend a significant amount of cash this offseason to make sure they’re abiding by the NFL’s 90 percent rule.
With relatively few of their own players hitting free agency, the Steelers don’t have that many needs, meaning you should expect Khan to be seeking some of the top players in the free agent class, instead of the Steelers usual bargain hunting.
As a rule, Pittsburgh hasn’t spent huge money in free agency, but they’ve usually drafted better in the past, instead choosing to re-sign their own players, instead of playing in the free agent market. But this time around, that won’t be the case. In the 2020 and 2021 draft classes, only Alex Highsmith and Pat Freiermuth got second contracts with the team, and 2022 isn’t looking a lot better at this point.
That means it’s time to spend big in free agency. Alan breaks it down.
