There are multiple reasons why the Pittsburgh Steelers reworked the contract of defensive end Cameron Heyward to the tune of $75.1 million between now and the end of the 2024 season.

He’s an All-Pro. He’s a stabilizing locker room influence in an unstable time. He’s a tremendous fan, media and community ambassador. He has no clear-cut successor on the roster. The team is likely to lose many other key contributors this offseason.

So why create another massive hole when Heyward wants to stay and still appears to have a lot of football left in him?

Yup. Those are the reasons why the Steelers decided to retain Heyward at such a high price at his age (31). He’ll be earning the highest average annual value for a defensive player over 30 years old in NFL history.

As a result, Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert probably had a moment of pause before putting pen to paper.

One theory as to why the risk is worthwhile is that it appears Heyward is getting better with age. His last three seasons — ages 28-30 — were his three Pro Bowl campaigns. He and Stephon Tuitt have allowed the Steelers to reinvent the view of the 3-4 end in their defense.

No longer is this position just about containing the run and occupying blockers so that the outside linebackers can make splash plays behind the line of scrimmage.

Now the end position is very much relied upon to get upfield and create pass-rush pressure from the inside. Hence, Heyward accumulated 29 of his 54 career sacks over the last three seasons.

“I felt like there was another gear for me to hit,” Heyward said on Monday.

As Heyward gets older, can he be counted on for as many consistent snaps as he has given over his first nine seasons? History of some other recent standouts at the position shows a mixed bag.

The Steelers also had Pro Bowl performers at defensive end when Brett Keisel and Aaron Smith anchored the edges. Smith stayed with the team through his 35th birthday. Keisel retired at 36.

Smith’s seasons when he was between 31 and 35 years of age were 2007-11. In 2008, he started all 16 games and was a key cog in a legendary Super Bowl-winning defense. In those other four seasons, he missed 38 of 64 games. In his first seven full years, Smith missed only two games.

So when his body went, it went. He endured neck, knee, bicep and rotator cuff injuries down the stretch of his career.

Over five seasons between the ages of 32 and 36 in 2010-14, Keisel completed only one full season and missed a total of 15 games. By his last year, Keisel only started four games, yielding most of the playing time to Heyward, Cam Thomas and Tuitt as the starting defensive ends.

As of now, Heyward’s contract is slated to push him through his 35th birthday. If he can get through his 33-year-old season as an effective, consistent starter, the contract will have been worthwhile.

Even if Heyward’s best years have already occurred.

“I can’t say how vital they have been to my success,” Heyward said of Smith and Keisel.

“Brett always told me, ‘You are going to keep getting better. You haven’t hit your prime.’ And I really took that to heart.”

That seemed to happen with that first All-Pro season in 2017.

For the most part, durability hasn’t been a concern for Heyward. He did miss nine games with a torn pectoral muscle in 2016. But he only missed three contests over the five years before that. And he’s missed just one start in the three years since.

“I’m entering my 30s,” Heyward said Monday. “But I played behind those guys so long, I gotta play catch-up. I feel like I’m still in my late 20s.”

Heyward didn’t become a full-time starter until his third year in the league.

Clearly, Heyward is now being paid with the suggestion that his production will be commensurate with his past three seasons.

So maybe this is essentially a Major League Baseball type of contract where the player is being paid based on what he has done, as opposed to what he is likely to do midway through his 30s.

Not to mention, the contract can always be reworked along the way.

Let’s say Heyward does have a dip in productivity. For the sake of argument, assume he regresses to where he was between 2013-15 where he totaled 19.5 sacks over three seasons. That’s 6.5 sacks per year.

Former Steelers defensive lineman Javon Hargrave had that total in 2018. Then 4.5 in 2019 before he got a three-year, $39 million contract from the Philadelphia Eagles this offseason.

So use that as a comparison. And use it as a way to justify Heyward’s new ticket.

As if everything we chronicled at the outset of this column wasn’t enough.

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