Cam Heyward has regrets

He made a bad deal, doesn't like that he made a bad deal, and is trying to get a do-over. He probably will. But he's already lost the PR fight (for now)

It had been my goal to avoid jumping too much into the Cam Heyward contract saga with the Pittsburgh Steelers for a couple of reasons.

For one, I didn’t actually know what his issue was and what he wanted. Two weeks of camp went by before anybody even realized he wasn’t practicing with the team, and there was just very little information to dig through. Were his demands reasonable? Was the team being unfair? What exactly WERE his demands? Without any of that knowledge, any sort of an opinion was just going to be blind hot-takery.

There is also my own personal reality that I enjoy talking about and watching football games more than I enjoy talking about football itself. The 24/7/365 machine that the NFL has become is, at times, too much. Sometimes we just need a break from it. It just didn’t really interest me that much in the initial moment.

But also because I just figured it was some training camp noise that would get settled and everybody would move on when the season kicked off.

Now that Heyward has talked and stated his position, I have to be honest … he kind of lost me.

Not because he wants more money, but because of the way he’s handled it and the way he’s not really taking responsibility for his own decisions and the path he forged for himself.

In most cases I am on the side of the players.

In fights between billionaires and millionaires the latter group is the least objectionable of the two (even if I can not relate to either one of them), and in matters of sports that group is also the one that you’re paying your hard-earned money to watch. They are the ones providing you with the entertainment. They are the ones you care about. I’d rather see the player get the money than the owner keep it for themselves. Especially in a sport like football where there are significant health and safety risks for the players.

I do not begrudge Heyward or any player for trying to get everything they can, while they can. They have short careers, they assume physical risk in both the short-term and the long-term, and their ability to have maximum earning power is extremely limited.

I get all of that.

I am not here to lick the boots of owners and billionaires.

But I am also not here to blindly carry water for players when I think they’ve taken bad advice or made bad decisions for themselves.

And I think that’s where Cam falls right now given what he said on Monday when he stated his position.

It was only 11 months ago that Heyward signed a new three-year $45 million contract extension with the Steelers. Including the roster bonus he has already received for this season he has already collected over $30 million in cash from it, including his base salaries and roster bonuses.

But because Heyward bounced back from an injury-plagued (and down) season in 2023 with an All-Pro performance in 2024, he is not happy with that contract. Especially as several defensive tackles around the NFL have cashed in with bigger contracts and further pushed him down the financial leaderboards this spring and summer.

If that was where the story ended I would still kind of be on his side here. Especially if this was a contract that he had signed a couple of years ago.

He’s an All-Pro player. A lot of inferior players make more money than him at his position. He feels like he deserves better.

Fine.

Great.

Valid.

Again, I do not begrudge a player for feeling that way.

In this particular instance, however, I also do not blame the team for saying, “you just signed a multi-year contract 11 months ago and we can not get in the habit of re-working every contract every time somebody gets more money than you.”

But where Heyward really lost me was his comment on Monday where he claims that he told the Steelers when I have an All-Pro season this year I am coming back to renegotiate this.

That’s … that’s not how this works.

You don’t get to play the “I am betting on myself” card when you didn’t actually bet on yourself.

If he wanted to take the position of “I’m going to prove these guys wrong and show them I’m still good and get more money out of them next year,” he could have re-worked a contract that gave him that sort of leverage.

He could have taken a shorter contract.

He could have negotiated clauses or additional performance bonuses into the deal.

Hell, he could have taken no contract, dominated the way he did, and then entered the free agency pool as one of the top players available at a premium position and probably been able to name his price.

He did none of that.

He not only did none of that, he took what everybody knew was going to be a team-friendly deal because it was, for him, a safe deal. Despite his big words at the time, he didn’t actually trust himself to have that sort of season. He didn’t trust himself to have a healthy season after missing six games at the age of 34. He didn’t actually want to bet on himself.

He can say he trusted himself. He can say he was motivated. You can argue on his behalf that he trusted himself and was motivated.

But that’s not what his actions dictated. His actions said he wanted the safe money and the security that came from the contract he signed.

It was probably a bad deal for him at the time, and there was a very good chance it was going to become a worse deal for him if he played well.

Now he regrets it.

That is the only takeaway to be had here.

The counter argument here is that given the lack of guarantees in the contract Heyward was taking a risk that the Steelers could cut him after one year if he didn’t play well. Which is also fair. But he did play well. And the Steelers didn’t cut him. He already collected almost all of his money for this season up front. It’s already in his bank account before he plays a single snap.

I imagine at some point before the regular season begins the Steelers are going to cave and give him some sort of a new deal. They will. He is too good of a player, too important of a player and they have the salary cap space to make it work. Both sides know that. I also won’t be mad if they do that.

But I also won’t be mad at them if they refuse, or play hardball with him over it and drag it out. I’d get it. I’d understand it. I would not blame them at all.

This isn’t a deal that Heyward has outperformed for multiple years. The ink is still wet on it.

They still have to weigh his 2024 output with the fact he’s going to be 36 years old in 2025 and the reality that father time is always — and forever will be — undefeated in sports. It’s not always about what you did as a player, but rather what you WILL do in the future.

If that results in him potentially missing regular season games, that is a reality the Steelers — and Heyward — will have to deal with if and when it comes to that.

At which point the Steelers’ pitch might be pretty simple.

Either you want to be a Pittsburgh Steeler or you don’t.