After meeting tight end Eric Ebron for the first time at a Christianity conference on marriage in January, Ben Roethlisberger liked him so much he politicked coach Mike Tomlin to sign him.
It is not known if Roethlisberger ultimately swayed the Steelers to sign Ebron, but his pitch apparently didn’t hurt. They signed the seventh-year pro to a two-year, $12 million contract that includes a $5 million signing bonus.
Ebron’s deal was structured so it was salary-cap friendly in 2020 and allowed the Steelers to be in compliance with the cap limit of $198.2 million.
Ebron will receive $1 million in base salary and count only $3.5 million against the cap this season. But his numbers jump in 2021 when his base salary is $6 million and he will count $8.5 million against the cap.
The Steelers did not have to restructure any more player contracts to get under the cap, other than the five they had previously reworked — Roethlisberger, tight end Vance McDonald, cornerbacks Joe Haden and Steve Nelson and kicker Chris Boswell. Those moves allowed the Steelers to clear approximately $20 million in cap space for 2020.
General manager Kevin Colbert said the Steelers liked Ebron when he was coming out of North Carolina in 2014, but they knew they likely wouldn’t have a chance to draft him with the 15th overall pick. They were right. Ebron was selected with the 10th overall pick by the Detroit Lions.
But, after four seasons with the Lions and two with the Indianapolis Colts, Ebron became an unrestricted free agent after the 2019 season. On a conference call with reporters Thursday, he recalled seeing Roethlisberger’s name on a list of people attending the January conference put on by the NFL Players’ Association and hoped to meet him.
“I thought he’d be pretty cool to meet,” Ebron said. “He actually came up to me. I told him I was a free agent and didn’t know where I was headed. Maybe he pulled a string or two, who knows.”
Gerry Dulac: gdulac@post-gazette.com and Twitter @gerrydulac
First Published: April 3, 2020, 10:44 p.m.