It seems simple: Cameron Heyward wants a contract extension, and the Pittsburgh Steelers can save cap dollars this year and ensure that a potential Hall of Famer and one of the organization’s best ambassadors will retire with the club that drafted him.
Well, it’s not that simple.
If it were, then it likely wouldn’t have leaked that Heyward missed all offseason conditioning sessions over the past month and plans to skip all three weeks (10 practices) of organized team activities — which start Tuesday at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex — because of, as he noted recently on his “Not Just Football” podcast, “contract negotiations.”
“I have always attended these, but at this time it’s just contract negotiations. I want to be a Pittsburgh Steeler, but we’ll see what happens,” Heyward said. “You have to do what’s right for you. I’m training hard. It’s nothing I’m not doing on and off the field. I’m doing everything possible, and we’ll get there when we get there.”
Heyward has a $22.4 million cap hit in 2024, the final year of a four-year contract that set a record for a defensive player over age 30 when he signed it in 2020. His age — he turned 35 earlier this month — makes it difficult to properly gauge his market value, even for a player whose best seasons have come in the back half of his career.
General manager Omar Khan said at the combine in February that Heyward’s recovery from surgery after the 2023 season would limit his participation in any offseason activities.
“The reality is that he’s going to be 35 years old,” Khan said in Indianapolis. “We have to be careful how we manage his reps. We are going to be smart about it. We are at a point where we have to be smart about it. We aren’t going to rush it. He doesn’t have to learn the defense. He can probably teach it. We will be smart about it.”
