Ernest Jones has shined in his first couple of games with Seattle, and fans have begun discussing what it could cost to keep him past the next eight games.
The Seattle Seahawks are preparing for the home stretch of the 2024 season, with a crucial divisional matchup against the San Francisco 49ers on the slate for Week 11. It will be the first game of the season that the Hawks play without either veteran free agent linebacker signed in free agency in the spring, following the release of Tyrel Dodson on Monday and the October trade that sent Jerome Baker to the Tennessee Titans.
The part of the Baker trade that fans have like so far is the fact that it allowed the ‘Hawks to acquire linebacker Ernest Jones. Jones is a former third-round pick of the Los Angeles Rams who at just 24 years of age is a high level player. After finishing the 2023 season with the eleventh most tackles in the league, his performance in his first two games in a Seattle uniform has fans dreaming of bringing him back when he hits free agency in the spring.
That, of course, leads the discussion to the always relevant question of how much it might cost the Seahawks to sign Jones to a multi-year contract. There are a lot of variables that will need to be figured out in the coming months, so this is simply a crude attempt at putting the potential numbers somewhere in the right ballpark, even if they aren’t perfectly accurate with exactly four months left until free agency officially starts on March 12, 2025.
One of the most basic methods for projecting potential contract figures is to use the current season value tool from OverTheCap.com, and then to index the current year value to the salary cap amounts of future seasons. In this case that means the starting point is the $7.982M 2024 value that OTC calculates Jones is providing, and the indexing is simply basic math, so here are the resulting numbers.
Thus, any contract valuation discussion for Jones likely begins in the 3-year, $27M or 4-year, $38M range, before taking into consideration any youth premium or potential bidding war among suitors on the open market. Factoring those in likely push the total contract a few million higher, but in short the starting point for any contract projection is likely in the same range as the contract former Seahawks linebacker Jordyn Brooks signed with the Miami Dolphins last offseason.