Steelers starter may already be thinking about his next team heading into 2024

The NFL is a business of planning ahead.

Always looking at what's down the road, franchises and players have to do what's best for themselves.

And for starting guard James Daniels, he knows that more money is on the horizon, and so do the Steelers, hence their succession plan with rookie Mason McCormick . But for Daniels, he knows what is shaping up to be the final year in Pittsburgh is going to be worth every penny.

Daniels set to double his salary?

"Guards hit it big in free agency this year. [James] Daniels could come close to doubling his money", Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette said during his latest chat session on PPG . "In any event, he'll earn much more than the $8 million a year he's making with the Steelers. You can't pay everyone. Daniels has been solid, but he's never made a Pro Bowl. Sometimes you have to go young and cheap at a position because there are others on the roster who are valued more...

"...You have to be confident in your evaluation of a player going into free agency. And I think the Steelers feel that way about [James] Daniels. They know that he's going to be able to make more money on the open market. That's why they planned ahead and drafted Mason McCormick this year," Fittipaldo said on the North Shore Drive podcast with Christopher Carter.

Not only is Fiitpaldo right about guards hitting it big, but the Steelers have precedent as recent as this offseason, watching their former fourth-round pick Kevin Dotson, whom they traded to the Rams for a mere day-three pick ahead of the 2023 season, sign a three year $48m contract with LA.

And there's a good argument to be made that Daniels is better than Dotson, or at least in the macro, as his body of work with both the Bears and the Steelers has proven him to be an above-average starter in the NFL, and at times the best lineman on the Steelers roster.

Daniels signed a three-year, $26m contract with Pittsburgh in 2022. Still only 27 years old he approaches a contract year, there is more than enough evidence to suggest that if he plays the way he has been, he could be seeing another three-year deal, but this time for around $50m.