Fitzpatrick deal was come upon quickly

It’s amazing the things NFL teams can do when they’re not paying a franchise quarterback.

Don’t misunderstand. It’s always great to have a franchise quarterback. It makes winning much easier.

But when a team doesn’t have a boatload of money invested in its quarterback room, it can afford to do things such as make T.J. Watt the highest-paid defensive player in the NFL or Fitzpatrick the league’s highest-paid safety.

And yet they did so by lowering Fitzpatrick’s 2022 salary cap hit by about $2 million.

Sure, that means Fitzpatrick will be making more money in 2023 and beyond, but the Steelers could afford to do that because they know that they’ll have a relatively cheap quarterback room over the next few years.

Unlike the Watt negotiations last year, this didn’t carry over long into training camp. The Steelers were much tighter against the salary cap last year than they were this time around.

They didn’t need to play salary cap gymnastics to get the deal done because they had the cap space.

• This deal does put a little more pressure on defensive coordinator Teryl Austin and company to have a bounce-back season on defense. You can’t have the highest-paid defensive player in the league in Watt and the highest-paid safety in Fitzpatrick – along with Cam Heyward – and have a defense that is middle-of-the-pack.

The Steelers also now have the league’s highest-paid defense.

It had better be a top-10 unit – or even better than that.

• Fitzpatrick’s $18.4-million per year average makes him the highest-paid safety, bringing him in about $700,000 more per year than Seattle’s Jamal Adams.

It’s interesting that this deal got done just a day after it was announced the Chargers’ Derwin James wouldn’t be participating in many team drills at his team’s minicamp because he had undergone labrum surgery.

It was widely believed Fitzpatrick might want to wait for James to get a new deal – and vice versa – because both wanted the other to set the new salary bar for safeties.

But with James dealing with a labrum issue – after also missing time earlier in his career – he might not surpass Fitzpatrick’s contract.

That does not mean, however, that Fitzpatrick will be the gold standard at the position long.

Adams lasted as No. 1 for a year. Someone else will come along in the next year and surpass Fitzpatrick’s deal.

• The Steelers can now move on to other deals they want to get done before the start of the 2022 season.

Expect them to at least attempt to sign wide receiver Diontae Johnson to an extension, while placekicker Chris Boswell also could get a new deal. Boswell’s deal will be the easier of the two.

Boswell currently has the sixth-highest cap hit of any placekicker in the league at $4.9 million. The Raven’s Justin Tucker leads the way with a $5.9-million hit, though his contract averages $5 million per year.

Boswell’s last deal averaged $4.2 million per year. The Steelers should be able to work something out that makes Boswell happy. After all, the cap is going to go up considerably over the next few years. Today’s massive deal is tomorrow’s bargain.

• As for Johnson, that could get a little more sticky.

He currently has a cap hit of just over $3 million with a base salary of $2.79 million this year. Bumping that to the $20-million range – the going rate for wide receivers – makes things tricky.

The key, however, is the guaranteed money.

That doesn’t mean the Steelers can’t keep Johnson, should they so choose. They could still use a tag on him at the end of this season, but with all of the big wide receiver deals signed this offseason, the franchise tag for receivers, which was $18.42 million this year – will be north of $20 million next year.

That’s probably not going to be an option, either.

• The Steelers will have the cap space in 2023 should they choose to sign Johnson to an extension.

But they have always had a pecking order when it comes to contracts. Nobody on this team is going to make more money than Watt. Heyward is No. 2 in importance, as his $22.25 cap hit in 2023 shows. And now, Fitzpatrick is No. 3.

So, a new deal for Johnson would likely have to be at or slightly less than the $18.4 million per year Fitzpatrick just got.

• Fitzpatrick earned $5.7 million from the Steelers over the past three seasons. The Dolphins paid him $10.67 million for 18 games after selecting him 11th in the 2018 draft then trading him to the Steelers the next season.
• Johnson has earned $3.2 million with the Steelers in his first three seasons. This is the problem with the whole draft process.

If you go in the first round, you’re going to make really serious money. If not, you don’t get paid until that second contract.

Sure, $3.2 million is nothing to sneeze at. But when taxes, an agent, union fees and everything else are taken out, it’s more likely about half of that amount that Johnson has taken home.

So, if Johnson wants to max out his value, can anyone blame him? He’s performed like a first-round draft pick to this point in his career. He’s just not been compensated like one.

Consider that N’Keal Harry, the 32nd player selected in the 2019 draft when Johnson was the second pick of the third round, has already pocketed nearly $8.4 million in his career.

Harry has 57 career catches for 598 yards and four touchdowns. Johnson has 254 receptions – 32 more than any other player from the 2019 draft – for 2,764 yards and 20 touchdowns.

And remember in Johnson’s rookie season, he had 14 games of Mason Rudolph and Duck Hodges at quarterback.

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