{"id":780530,"date":"2026-02-27T19:38:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T19:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/780530\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T19:38:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T19:38:15","slug":"steelers-news-nfl-salary-cap-crosses-300-million-ahead-of-2026-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/780530\/","title":{"rendered":"Steelers news: NFL salary cap crosses $300 million ahead of 2026 season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The NFL officially announced the league\u2019s salary cap will increase to $301.2 million per team in the 2026 season, ESPN\u2019s Adam Schefter reported Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The official numbers are on the low end of the increase that was reported <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/TomPelissero\/status\/2017325334840930672\" rel=\"nofollow\">in late January<\/a>, but it still marks a $22 million increase. The $301.2 million mark is the highest ever, and the first time the cap has crossed the $300 million threshold. It has nearly doubled in the past decade.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.spotrac.com\/nfl\/pittsburgh-steelers\/cap\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Spotrac<\/a> recently updated its salary cap database to include the new number, projecting the Steelers to have around $44 million in top-51 cap space entering the new league year, which ranks eighth in the league. Pittsburgh is expected to have three players taking up over $20 million in cap space each in 2026: T.J. Watt ($42 million), D.K. Metcalf ($31 million), and Alex Highsmith ($20.1 million).<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The NFL legal tampering period for free agency will open at noon EST March 9. But before then, the Steelers can work to re-sign some of their pending free agents. You can view a full list <a href=\"https:\/\/www.behindthesteelcurtain.com\/pittsburgh-steelers-free-agency\/165916\/steelers-free-agents-2026-aaron-rodgers-isaac-seumalo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NFL officially announced the league\u2019s salary cap will increase to $301.2 million per team in the 2026&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2055],"tags":[7,6,520,57,2374,29510,2360,426],"class_list":{"0":"post-780530","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-steelers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-nfl","10":"tag-pittsburgh","11":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","12":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers-news","13":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers-salary-cap","14":"tag-pittsburghsteelers","15":"tag-steelers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116144289173552179","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}