Pittsburgh Steelers Pro Bowl center Maurkice Pounce has signed a five-year, $44 million contract extension, including a $13 million signing bonus.
Pouncey becomes the highest paid center in the league, exceeding the deal that Cleveland Browns center Alex Mack received early this year, as Pro Football Talk reports. Mack’s contract was a five-year, $42 million deal.
Pouncey is coming back from a torn ACL that he suffered in the first game of last season. He is almost all the way back to full strength after his surgery and say’s that he is ‘totally fine.”
He told Yahoo that his contract wasn’t very high on his list of concerns going into training camp. He was more concerned about getting the Steelers back into the postseason, as Yahoo reports.
“I didn’t have much role in it,” Pouncey said. ‘I told my agent to get it done as soon as possible so we could move on to other things.”
Ben Roethlisberger had high praise for Pouncey.
“That group of front is as special as it is,” he said. “He’s the glue that holds them all together.”
Pouncey is the first center in NFL history to make the Pro Bowl in each of his first three seasons. He was the first center taken in the 2010 NFL, number 18 by the Steelers.