Steelers Now
On Thursday, Pittsburgh Steelers All-Pro outside linebacker T.J. Watt become the highest-paid non-QB in NFL history for the second time in his Hall of Fame career, reaching agreement on a three-year, $123 million extension that includes $108 million fully guaranteed at signing, according to ESPN’s NFL insider Adam Schefter.
Thanks to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, we now know the full details on Watt’s historic contract.
1. Signing bonus: $40 million.
2. 2025 base salary: $4 million, fully guaranteed.
3. 2026 base salary: $32 million, fully guaranteed.
4. 2027 base salary: $32 million, fully guaranteed.
5. 2028 offseason roster bonus: $15 million, due on the third day of the league year.
6. 2028 base salary: $21.05 million.
Watt’s $108 million in guarantees run all the way through 2027. In 2025, he will have a $23.3 million cap hit, which saves the team $7.05 million. Watt will count $42 million against the cap in 2026 and 2027. Watt turns 33 in October of 2027.
Mike Garafolo of NFL Network provided some in-depth details on how the Steelers reached the record-breaking deal with their star pass rusher.
“I remember talking to people in the [Steelers] building then, and I mentioned this on The Insiders, they said, ‘Look, [Watt] probably just doesn’t want to come to minicamp. Like, he’ll be here for training camp because we feel really good about the offer we put out there right now. It is right there at the top of the market,’” Garafolo said on The Insiders.
“At the time, Myles Garrett had been done at $40 million dollars per year, so they understood what they were going to have to do here. And nobody was panicking because the thought was, ‘Once we get closer to training camp, that will be the pressure point that eventually gets this done.’”
From The Insiders on @nflnetwork: From T.J. Watt’s ✌🏼 pic to the 💪🏼 shot today, the #Steelers stayed calm and confident a contract extension would get done. And it did. pic.twitter.com/X05KtYbeOa
— Mike Garafolo (@MikeGarafolo) July 17, 2025
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now: New Details Revealed on T.J. Watt’s Record-Breaking Deal
