Pittsburgh Steelers face lack of options & time to retain wide receiver, Mike Wallace – NFL News
Time is running out for the Pittsburgh Steelers to decide if they want to lock in their wide receiver, Mike Wallace, before the player becomes free agency.
Steelers have more than one easy option for retaining the receiver with the side in the longer run except for that their players’ salaries cap issue does not allow the team any of those.
The player is set to become free agency after March 13, 2012, and thereby available for signing by any other franchise from the National Football League (NFL).
First choice before Steelers’ management is to offer a long-term deal to the player and that will definitely make him play for them for many more seasons to come.
This is not an easy option given that the team is already in a serious situation as far as their overspend on the players wages is concerned, as recently pointed out by the general manager, Kevin Colbert.
So it is less likely to happen when the team is already pursuing an austerity drive to cut its players expense to maintain it somewhere closer to the cap of about $120 million a year.
Another option for the team is to prevent the player from becoming free agent by assigning him a franchise tag.
Again, it is a matter of finances that makes the choice even harder for the team. According to some estimates, the tag price is set to increase upto $13.7 million, which still be about $9 million above the cap level.
It could also be possible that the management bids the highest free-agent tender on the player. This will make the potential team to surrender their first draft pick to Steelers if they are unable to match their offer price.
Yet again this is the most expensive choice that should be waiting for Steelers, and they are least likely to go for it.
At the end, it becomes a matter of hard choice for the team to retain Wallace, who has gone over 1000 yards in back-to-back seasons.
They will definitely not like to let him become free agency and thus prone to signing by any other team on the league.
In spite of that Steelers, as a result of recent measures, including release of players and restructuring of their deals, they are still $10 million above the cap, and will think twice before making any financial commitments to the player.
With increasing amount of difficulty and uncertainty, the team is running out of time to make a choice about the player, and what that choice would be?, is not clear yet.
Meanwhile, the deadline of March 13 is looming large over them to either lock in the player or let him be free agent.
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