A day after missing out on Drew Dalman, Seattle watched as the Vikings inked another interior lineman many Seahawks fans wanted sign elsewhere.
Fans of the Seattle Seahawks had themselves convinced that 2025 would be the offseason where John Schneider changes his tune and addresses the offensive line in a serious manner.
In the week leading up to free agency the Hawks cleared the books of several of their largest contracts, from making several veterans cap casualties to trading DK Metcalf and Geno Smith, the front office had cleared the books and pushed Seattle into the top five in available 2025 cap space.
All they had to do was sit back and wait for the start of the legal tampering period at 12pm New York time on Monday, and there would be a virtual conveyor belt of offensive linemen heading towards the VMAC.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen as many planned.
Right out of the gate the Chicago Bears came to an agreement with Drew Dalman, widely considered the top available center available on the free agent market. That led many to believe that the addition of Will Fries would be coming to the Hawks, in spite of Fries suffering a broken leg in Week 5 that ended his 2024 season.
Tuesday morning, speculation that Fries could be headed to the Pacific Northwest ended abruptly as reports emerged that another NFC North team, the Minnesota Vikings, had agreed to terms with Fries on a massive contract.
Guard Will Fries is headed to the #Vikings for five years and $88 million, sources told ESPN.
One of the top interior linemen on the market is now off the board. pic.twitter.com/xL38oVQfNO
— Jeremy Fowler (@JFowlerESPN) March 11, 2025
The five-year, $88M contract the two sides agreed to represents an average of $17.6M per season doesn’t even qualify to make Fries one of the top ten highest paid guards in the NFL by average annual salary, but is more than $4M per year than Damien Lewis earned on the open market last offseason.
Obviously, there are still plenty of free agent interior offensive linemen on the market, so there is no need to panic, but Seahawks fans have now watched two of their top targets come off the board on consecutive days.