The Seahawks have a little more than a week to come into compliance with the 2025 salary cap, and here are some of the names the team could move on from in order to become cap compliant.
Barely a week remains until the start of the new NFL league year on at 4pm New York time on Wednesday, March 12, the time by which all teams must be in compliance with the 2025 salary cap of $279.2M.
With that being the case, according to OverTheCap.com, there are still a half dozen teams that need to make moves or restructure players in order to gain compliance, with the Seattle Seahawks being one of those teams. Per OTC the Hawks remain roughly $7M over the cap, an amount that will not be difficult to reach, but which still must be done.
The question, then, becomes which players Seattle could potentially release in order to free up space, not just to come into cap compliance, but to free up the space that will be needed to add players in free agency, sign their draft class and so on. Thus, without wasting any further time, here are a list of the players whose release would have the biggest impact on the salary cap.
WR Tyler Lockett
Potential cap savings: $17M
From a logical perspective, this is a move that most would say needs to be made. From an emotional standpoint, it’s a move very few Seattle wants to see happen. Lockett is the longest tenured member of the team, having been with the team so long that he was just the second player drafted by John Schneider and Pete Carroll after the interception that made Malcolm Butler a household name.
Lockett has been with the Hawks so long that during his rookie season that Bruce Arians, Jim Tomsula and Jeff Fisher were the other coaches in the NFC West, and the Los Angeles Rams were playing their final season in St. Louis before returning to California.
However sentimental fans may be, the reality is that Lockett caught just 49 passes for 600 yards and a pair of touchdowns in 2024, while DK Metcalf and Jaxon Smith-Njigba took over the top two spots at the position. Far from horrible production, but certainly well below what would be expected of a player with a cap hit of $30.895M. So, barring a restructure similar to the one he signed last offseason, it would seem likely that Lockett would get the axe in order to free up enough space that the Hawks would not need to make any other moves to gain cap compliance.
S Rayshawn Jenkins
Potential cap savings: $5.28M
Jenkins was signed in order to pair another veteran safety with Julian Love after both Quandre Diggs and Jamal Adams were cap casualties themselves during the 2024 offseason. He began the year as the starter, but a hand injury landed him on injured reserve and then upon his return to the active roster he failed to reclaim his starting spot, having been Wally Pipped by Coby Bryant.
Jenkins then performed well as he finished out the year in a third safety role in Mike Macdonald’s defense, but in the day and age of the rookie wage scale there is zero need to carry a third safety who has a $7.78M cap hit.
Anyone who had any question about whether or not Jenkins might become a cap casualty likely had those questions answered when reports emerged that the Seahawks had allowed Jenkins’ agent to explore trade opportunities. The number one reason an agent would ask for such permission is if they had been informed that their client was about to become a cap casualty and felt they were unlikely to be able to sign a similarly sized contract once on the market.
iDL Roy Robertson-Harris
Potential cap savings: $6.6M
The situation of Robertson-Harris is interesting, in that the Seahawks could save nearly enough through his release to gain cap compliance, and there would be zero dead cap as a result of moving on. However, should Seattle opt to move on from Robertson-Harris for cap reasons, they would create an even greater void on the defensive interior, a position group where they are already set to see both Jarran Reed and Johnathan Hankins hit free agency.
So, while the cap savings would be there, creating those savings would be at the cost of needing to replace the player at a position where signing an experienced replacement could cost almost as much. That likely means that Schneider and his staff have spent a not insignificant amount of time assessing the market for interior defensive linemen ahead of the start of free agency in order to better understand whether or not moving on from Robertson-Harris would result in a significant net savings at the end of the day.
LT George Fant
Potential cap savings: $3.8M*
Fant was added as insurance during the 2024 offseason in case the Hawks needed extra depth at right tackle in case Abe Lucas’ recovery from knee surgery dragged into the regular season. Lucas’ recovery did indeed drag well into the regular season, however, Fant was not there to provide veteran play as anticipated, as a knee issue of his own limited Fant to just 30 snaps in a pair of appearances.
If there weren’t a whole host of questions regarding Lucas’ continued recovery and Mike Jerrell’s development, moving on from Fant would be easy. However, a cap hit of $5.65M is a reasonable cap hit for an experienced swing tackle, and if Fant is able to get and stay healthy, would provide a veteran backstop behind both Lucas and Charles Cross.
In addition, with so many other levers to pull to create the cap space the team will need to operate, there is no rush to move on from the veteran tackle. Fant has no guaranteed money left on his contract, meaning barring injury there is no difference in cap savings should the Hawks move on from Fant today or at final roster cuts in late August.
EDGE Dre’Mont Jones
Potential cap savings: $11.573M
Many fans were ready to move on from Jones last offseason, but the Seahawks opted to restructure his contract, converting base salary to signing bonus in order to create cap space for the 2024 season. A lot of fans now assume that Jones’ release is simply a matter of time, and that may well be the case.
However, given the aforementioned potential loss of snaps on the defensive line, combined with the flexibility to move inside on passing downs, it may be premature to move on from Jones. In addition, having already added void years to his contract as part of the 2024 restructure, the Hawks could opt to restructure rather than release Jones, and could create $9.887M of cap space without even needing to consult Jones.
EDGE Uchenna Nwosu
Potential cap savings: $8.15M/$2.15M/$8.66M
There is zero question something is brewing with Nwosu. He had a $6M guarantee that was set to vest the Friday after the Super Bowl, however, the two sides agreed to push the vesting date back in order to work on some sort of restructure. That makes a reworked contract likely, though the possibility remains that he could become a cap casualty, it would simply be a matter of how exactly the Seahawks might opt to do so.
Moving on before the $6M guarantee vests would allow the Hawks to save $8.15M, however, as explained in a separate post, that would blow apart the foundation of how the Hawks structure contracts. In contrast, releasing Nwosu after the guarantee vests would allow the Seahawks to save only $2.15M of cap space, however, they could opt to designate Nwosu a post-June 1 release, which would create $8.66M of savings.
The catches with the post-June 1 designation are twofold. First, a post-June 1 designation cannot be made until after the start of the new league, meaning the $8.66M of cap savings could not be used to come into salary cap compliance, and secondly, the cap space created by such a move would not be credited to the Hawks until June 2. That means the $8.66M created by releasing Jones with a post-June 1 designation could be used during the summer and the season to sign draft picks, pay the practice squad and have an injured reserve pool. However, it would not be available to the team to make use of during free agency in the coming weeks.
For now, though, it’s simply a matter of waiting to see exactly what the Hawks do.