As the 2024 NFL league year rolls into the second calendar month, teams are still continuing to shape their roster with free agent acquisitions. Because of these moves, how much space a team has in regards to the salary cap is constantly changing. But for the Pittsburgh Steelers, there hasn’t been a change in almost a week.

Since my last salary cap update almost a week ago, the Steelers have had no change to their cap space despite announcing four new players. Unfortunately, the financials for those players are still lagging behind and have not been accounted for at the popular salary cap websites such as overthecap.com (OTC) and spotrac.com. For this reason, the Steelers are still holding steady at around $14 million in salary cap space.

Even though the Steelers have four players whose salaries have not been accounted for in Quez Watkins, Kyle Allen, Dean Lowery, and Cordarrelle Patterson, they also have other moves which can be made to free up cap space. Move such as restructuring some contracts with Alex Highsmith being the most likely, or doing contract extensions to players such as Cam Heyward or James Daniels could be on the docket. So for the Steelers, this number could continue to fluctuate both up and down.

But where do the Steelers currently rank in the NFL in terms of salary cap space?

According to OTC, the Steelers rank 18th in having the most salary cap space as of Tuesday evening. There are two teams still with more than $40 million in cap space in the New England Patriots and Washington Commanders. In all, there are 12 teams who have $20 million or more at this time.

When looking how the Steelers compare to the rest of the AFC North, they are currently only behind the Cincinnati Bengals who have more than $23 million in salary cap space available and are ranked 10th in the NFL. Following the Steelers are the Baltimore Ravens who are ranked 19th and have just over $12 million in available salary cap space. Coming in at the bottom of the division are the Cleveland Browns who are 28th with just over $4 million in space. One thing the Browns do have going for them in regards to the salary cap, but not being advantageous otherwise, is their lack of draft picks in 2024. The Browns do not have a pick in either the first or the fourth round, leaving their draft class not counting that much against the 2024 salary cap.

When it comes to how much salary cap space teams have right now, oftentimes it is greatly influenced by how many of the potential money-shirting moves they have already made. While a number of teams have had to push lots of money into future seasons by restructuring players in order to become cap compliant, as stated before the Steelers have not made any moves of that nature at this time. While the Steelers have released players and saved the money against the salary cap, these moves were more likely on the horizon regardless. So while the Steelers are sitting with $14 million in cap space yet still have as much as additional $16 million they will need come the first week of September, they are not in a situation where they would be unable to continue to spend should the proper situation arise.