The Seattle Seahawks are signing plant aficionado Leonard Williams to a three-year, $90 million contract extension, setting his roots in place through 2029. It could solidify that the Seahawks are the last career team for Williams, and another Super Bowl would guarantee his standing as one of the greatest players in franchise history.
Seaside Joe last talked about a potential pre-season Williams extension last week (we expected it) and the $30 million average salary is probably even somewhat of a discount. This move should also create more cap space for Seattle right now, money that they’ll either use to pay somebody else or rollover into 2027.
Although the Williams contract will eat a significant chunk of Seattle’s 2027 cap space, which has been rapidly shrinking because of these deals for Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Devon Witherspoon, and Derick Hall, the Seahawks have even more places to go to save money next year for cap space should they need it. DeMarcus Lawrence has already confirmed his retirement, while Jarran Reed and Cooper Kupp will at least be mulling it over.
Meanwhile, extending Sam Darnold next offseason would save another big chunk of cap space, assuming he’s good. And hell, if he’s bad they’ll save even more!
Join Seaside Joe’s regular joes club, it’s only $5 per month! Or $55 for a year and you’ll be paid through the 2027 preseason:
But if Darnold is like Leonard Williams, his impending contract negotiations are going to be the last thing on his mind this season and he will benefit from focusing on football.
Williams has a philosophy to not be focused on his contracts as he sees other players crumble when that happens, as reported by Bob Condotta:
“I try not to think about it, honestly,” he said then. “I’ve always been that type of guy. I’ve had a lot of contracts at this point in my career, and I’ve always noticed players that focus on their contract end up not playing well. They end up having their head in the wrong place. I’ve noticed that when I focus on being where I’m at, focusing on my team and how I can get better individually, things always tend to work themselves out.”
It makes me wonder if that attitude rubbed off on Witherspoon and that’s why he showed up to practice every day and risked an injury without complaining about the time it took to hammer out the details of his own extension. And if he is rubbing off on other players, does he make the “uss uss ugh uss” sounds?
My next inclination would be to expect a deal for Jason Myers, assuming nobody cares about how bad he was against the Titans on Sunday. And maybe Uchenna Nwosu.
Leonard Williams may be 32, but given how much better he’s gotten during the three years he’s been in Seattle, the Seahawks are betting that he still has more room to grow*.
*gosh I really feel like Liev Schrieber could say something like this exactly in the hard knocks finale
Woo hoo!!! Now we're talkin'. Big Cat might be as valuable as anyone on defense. Seems like a great teammate too.
If they find a way to extend Darnold, Murphy and Barner next year, we could be looking at making a run similar to what the Chiefs did only better. Year after next extend Zabel, Emmanwori, Arroyo and Lucas.
Does anyone else feel pretty good about the new owners? Being football fans is good. Fans want to win. My one concern is the son wants to be involved. He could start forcing JS’s hand on football decisions. But perhaps the dad would be keeping an eye on his involvement. Hopefully he takes his time and considers the first few years as an apprenticeship under Schneider to learn how JS works to build a strong winning team.