Feb 22, 2020 5 min read

Much of the talk about the CBA offered by NFL owners to its players was on the proposed 17-game schedule that was part of the deal.

There’s a good reason for that, as a 17-game schedule would obviously substantially change the NFL.

But there was a heck of a lot more in that offer than just that. From salary increases to larger rosters, fewer padded practices and the end of the league’s Draconian marijuana suspensions, there is a lot in the offer players can get behind.

The Steelers are one of the teams that should be pushing for a deal to be completed before the new league year begins March 18. They’re tight against the projected 2020 salary cap, which isn’t all that unusual. They are in that situation every year because they spend to the max to keep their players.

What is unusual is that if a new CBA isn’t approved, 2020 will have different rules in place for how teams can deal with that.

The Steelers have been an organization that likes to turn base salary into signing bonus for players currently on the roster, creating cap space. But because 2020 is the final year of the CBA, teams are not permitted to lower a player’s salary by more than 30 percent.

So, for example, when the Steelers gave cornerback Joe Haden a new deal in 2019, they lowered his base salary to $1 million, giving him his salary for the season in signing bonus. That allowed them to create significant cap space.

But because of the 30 percent rule, they would not be permitted to lower a player’s salary that much, even if they gave it to him instead in a signing bonus. Thus, they can’t create cap space the way they normally do – unless the new CBA is approved.

That could force the Steelers to cut more players than they would like to create cap space as opposed to doing some simple restructures.

In addition, because of the rules of the final season of a CBA, teams can use the franchise and transition tags. In normal years, they can only use one or the other, not both.

That would mean the Steelers could place the franchise tag on linebacker Bud Dupree and the transition tag on nose tackle Javon Hargrave. It’s unlikely since the team would have to create about $30 million in cap space to pull it off, but it’s available to them.

• One of the interesting nuggets in the new proposal would affect first-round draft picks.

Currently, teams can pick up a fifth-year option on those players before their fourth season in the league. That fifth-year option is based on different salary levels depending on where the player was selected in the draft.

For top-10 picks, they get a fifth-year salary that is the average of the top 10 players at their position in the league. For the 22 picks after that in the first round, the salary is slotted based on where they were selected.

The CBA offered by the owners would make the salaries in the fourth and fifth seasons fully guaranteed if the team chooses to pick up the option. And, it would make all of the fifth-year salaries performance based.

For the Steelers, that’s significant. They’ll pick up the fifth-year option on T.J. Watt at some point in the next couple of months. As a two-time Pro Bowl player who was first-team All-Pro in 2019, Watt would get a significant raise in 2021 if this deal is passed.

As it is now, he would get around $9 million in 2021 as the 30th pick in the first round of the 2017 draft. He might get twice that much for performance-based pay.

• It appears Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred skipped all of his public relations classes in college.

How else to explain his complete botching of the fallout from the current cheating scandal? Seriously, how can you call the trophy given to your champion each season “just a piece of metal,” when talking about why he won’t strip the cheating Astros of their World Series title.

Manfred later walked back those comments, but the damage was done.

• The dire predictions of the Pirates losing 100 or more games might be correct. We’ll see.

But the people predicting that don’t realize exactly how tough it is to lose 100 games.

Since 1955, the Pirates have lost 100 or more games just three times. And that’s despite having a run of 20 seasons without a playoff berth from 1993 through 2012.

• It appears the NFL will go to a 14-team playoff in 2020, with seven teams from each conference going to the postseason.

That would make for just one team in each conference getting a bye, which actually isn’t a bad idea. It also would create a six-game schedule for the Wildcard weekend.

The owners don’t need permission from the NFLPA to implement the new playoff format, so consider it pretty much a done deal.

The Steelers, by the way, would have made the playoffs in each of the past 10 seasons had that format been in place.

Dale Lolley covers the Steelers for DKPittsburghSports.com and writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.