The salary cap situation in Seattle can be made great, but at the moment it’s highly unfortunate.
Though there’s still a game to be played, it is meaningless and we begin the painful process of turning our attention to the offseason for the Seattle Seahawks.
Seattle heads into 2025 with the third-smallest cap space in the NFL. In fact, according to both OverTheCap and Spotrac, they’re already in the negative.
The main salary culprit on any NFL team comes not from the bulk of the roster, but from its stars. The most expensive players always take up a heavily disproportional amount of the salary cap.
Unfortunately for the Seahawks, this time around, these fellas are not necessarily the best athletes on the team.
In fact, exactly just one of the five most expensive 2025 contracts is likely to make it to next summer unscathed: Leonard Williams.
Here are the six highest contracts headed into the winter negotiations. Six, because these make up all the players on Seattle with a 2025 cap hit over $20 million:
- Geno Smith – $38.5 million
- DK Metcalf – $31.875 million
- Tyler Lockett – $30.9 million
- Leonard Williams – $29 million
- Dre’Mont Jones – $25.6 million
- Uchenna Nwosu – $21.5 million
In 2024, Geno Smith held the only cap hit north of $20 million.
On the plus side, Seattle currently boasts virtually no dead money. Under a half million. The bad news, they’re going to need to take some on.
Williams is good to go, and Nwosu is a far lower possibility to remain untouched. Every other guy on that last I would expect to have their contract readjusted.
Let’s continue thinking in pairs. I venture that Tyler Lockett and Dre’Mont Jones are headed to the open market this offseason. He’s already done the sunset contract restructure thing, and consensus seems to be he will go the route of KJ Wright, Bobby Wagner, and several other greats who gave it another shot somewhere else.
New: Sunday may be Tyler Lockett’s last game in a #Seahawks uniform, but he says it won’t be his last in the NFL.
“I plan on playing next year.”
On a selfless season from a Seahawks legend, a true team player who set the stage for the rise of JSN: https://t.co/GlhaNyYkvs pic.twitter.com/QNhQ9Bb8vP
— Dugar, Michael-Shawn (@MikeDugar) January 1, 2025
This brings me no joy.
Jones, for all the hope about moving positions and getting better opportunities with Mike Macdonald, statistically got worse. That contract is incredibly prohibitive and they’ll save most of it but cutting him outright.
Metcalf and Geno Smith remain the negotiation candidates. They’re also the two that seem to carry the most opinions among fans by far. Metcalf has $7 million attached to 2026 by way of a void year, and I think both he and Smith will get a couple extra years added. I know many disagree, and it’s obviously easier said than done.
Currently $177 million out of 286 is pointed towards these six players. John Schneider’s gotta get his $8 million offensive lineman somehow, so let the wheeling and dealing begin.