Pittsburgh Steelers: Latest Updates on Mike Wallace's Future in Pittsburgh

It is not an inevitability that wide receiver Mike Wallace will be playing for a team other than the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2012, but recent trends make it all the more likely.

The Steelers have chosen to place a first-round restricted free agent tender on Wallace, worth just over $2.7 million this year, rather than assign him the franchise tag simply because they could not afford the $9.4 million price.

This means that when free agency starts on March 13, interested teams can offer Wallace a contract and should the Steelers not be able to match or beat it, they will likely lose Wallace and receive a first-round draft pick as compensation.

Three names keep coming up when it comes to teams that might make a move for Wallace—the San Francisco 49ers, New England Patriots and Cincinnati Bengals. However, of those teams, only the 49ers seem to be truly in contention.

San Francisco has just over $23 million in estimated salary cap room (the league has yet to release the final figure for 2012) and the 49ers have a clear need at wide receiver. Though this year's crop of free agent receivers is deep, it is quite likely that the 49ers are gearing up to make Wallace an offer.

Of course, Wallace does not have to accept any offer given him—though he'd be foolish not to—and the Steelers could also match whatever a team wants to give.

In that sense, the Steelers do hold a great deal more power than it first seems. Teams that want to make an overture to Wallace will need to heavily front-load his contract to the point that the Steelers cannot possibly afford to give him a comparable deal.

The baseline for any contract Wallace receives will be the one recently signed by the Buffalo Bills' Stevie Johnson, worth $36.25 million over five years, with $19.5 million guaranteed.

The Steelers can actually match or beat that number should they have to, but again, it depends on how that money is spread out over the lifetime of the contract. Any big money upfront will be cost-prohibitive for Pittsburgh and thus Wallace would likely move on.

There's also the issue of the first-round tender to consider as well. No restricted free agent who has a first-round tender designation has signed an offer sheet in the NFL in the last 10 years, and precedent would thus indicate the chances Wallace stays in Pittsburgh are high.

Granted, this is a different financial climate than in the past, when first-round RFA tenders used to also include a third-round draft pick. The teams most interested in Wallace this year also conveniently pick later in the first round (or, in the cases of the Bengals and Patriots, have two first-round picks).

However, the NFL is a risk-adverse environment (just look at the willingness of teams to use the franchise tag on a kicker, or to pay a running back for past performances), and there's nothing more risky than giving up a first-round draft pick for a player who has looked good on one team with no guarantee that performance will translate elsewhere.

So it actually is not a foregone conclusion that Wallace will leave Pittsburgh, though there is a lot working against him staying. At this point, no matter what happens, it won't be a surprise.

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