If you follow the Pittsburgh Steelers like we do, you may have noticed something interesting about the new three-year contract given to Joe Haden, who was already due $10 million in what would have been base salary in the final year of a prior deal he had with the team.
Haden was given a signing bonus north of $16 million. That is more than half of the total value of the $32 million contract that he signed. When the Steelers do contracts with most positions, particularly with players whom they are signing in free agency, they tend to try to keep the signing bonus to somewhere in the ballpark of 20-25 percent of the total value of the contract, which is not the norm around the rest of the league.