Brown also receives the new contract he’d been seeking as part of a trade. The three-year deal will pay him a maximum of about $54 million and includes $30.125 million in guaranteed money. His previous deal was to pay him about $38.9 million over the next three seasons.
The Steelers once envisioned they would win Super Bowls with Roethlisberger, Brown and running back Le’Veon Bell as centerpieces of an explosive offense. But that group never won a title together, and Bell is headed elsewhere in free agency after sitting out all of last season in a contract stare-down with the team.