Seahawks create Cat space
Leonard Williams restructure opens $14 million in 2025 salary cap space and Uchenna Nwosu is the next domino
The Seattle Seahawks created $14.1 million in big cat cap space on Thursday, restructuring Leonard Williams’ contract by converting $18.745 million in salary to a bonus and adding two void years. This is not a pay cut, this is moving money around in order to lower the amount that shows up on the books in 2025.
In short: Base Salary and Bonuses (Prorated and non-Prorated) is what counts against a team’s salary cap each season, so by turning base salary into a bonus — and in this case adding two dummy void years to spread it out even further — teams create immediate cap space and lose future cap space.
This news is not worth investigation. I’ve been writing about the Seattle’s need to create 2025 cap space since last summer. A few weeks ago, the Seahawks rolled over $8 million in cap space from last season and this move now gets them within about $14 million of compliance with the projected 2025 salary cap.
The point is not to be compliant, it is to have a lot of room before re-signing, extending, adding, and drafting players in the next 1-8 months and the Seahawks are still a long ways off from having “a lot” of cap space.
The next domino to fall will be Uchenna Nwosu.
If Nwosu is on the team on Valentine’s Day, $6 million of his $14.48 million base salary will become guaranteed. Even if the Seahawks want to hold onto Nwosu and ignore the last two seasons, the last thing we should expect is for the team to hit the gas on $21.2 million cap hit in 2025 — currently 13th-highest for any edge rusher in the league.
(By the way, you think Myles Garrett goes to OvertheCap.com, scrolls edge rushers, sees his name BELOW Uchenna Nwosu, and thinks “This is fine”? I’m sure he does want to be traded to a Super Bowl contender, but he also knows that his pay isn’t okay.)
The most financially sound thing the Seahawks can do is release Nwosu with an understanding that they want to bring him back. Being owed $15 million in 2025, the question isn’t only “How much do the Seahawks save by releasing him?” ($8.1 million cap space, $15m cash) but also, “What would Nwosu get as a free agent?”
Having missed most of the last two seasons and only producing ordinary stats when he’s healthy, a free agent Nwosu should be expecting no more than half of that sum: Marcus Davenport, a same-aged edge rusher with an injury history, signed a one-year, $6.5 million deal with the Lions in 2024.
It also happened to be a mistake as Davenport played in two games for Detroit.
Try to find any player in the NFL that a team is willingly paying $15 million in cash to in 2025 after he missed 66% of the last two years and has the equivalent of 3 sacks. To restructure Nwosu — pushing the $14 million in the future instead of just letting go of it and trying to re-sign him for a reasonable amount — would be throwing money away.
You can love Nwosu as a player and as a person and still accept that the $15 million in cash he’s owed is taking money away from the total pool that John Schneider is allowed to spend in 2025. If the Seahawks release and re-sign Nwosu for $6 million, that’s $9 million that Schneider will now be allowed to spend on a guard or a receiver … or an edge rusher.
But if the Seahawks restructure Nwosu, that’s just fast-forwarding the $15 million into Nwosu’s bank account. It doesn’t CREATE any additional cash to spend and it hurts your favorite team to benefit one of your favorite players.
For that reason, I would not expect Nwosu to be on the books in one week but he could still be on the team in September.
ICYMI: WR is a buyer’s market in 2025, what does that mean for DK Metcalf?
Let’s answer some questions from Super Joes. If you want to get the Super Joes Q&A Mailbag to submit your own questions or opinions about the Seahawks, upgrade from free or Regular Joes today!
Cavmax: Could there be a play for Myles Garrett? Ooooh baby! That's an exciting thought!
Paul G reply: Garrett is one of the best players in the league. At a minimum, Seattle (a) has to find out what trading for Garrett would take and (b) can’t let short term salary cap issues be an obstacle.
Any really good/great team that trades for Myles Garrett is going to put themselves in position to win the Super Bowl. In the past decade, we’ve seen the Super Bowl success that Von Miller, Aaron Donald, and Chris Jones have had with their teams, and to a lesser extent Nick Bosa, Trey Hendrickson, Vita Vea, and these last couple of Eagles Super Bowl teams.
I doubt that the Seahawks are one Garrett away from winning the Super Bowl. But he should be able to play at a high level for at least 3-4 more years, so he could still be a great acquisition if it was possible. I just don’t think Seattle could offer enough for the Browns to bite the bullet on a nearly-untradeable contract situation.
The Browns are in Saints-level cap space hell and trading Garrett would make his cap hit go UP by $16.5 million, not down. Cleveland could still pull it off, but would you trade the best player in your franchise’s history (post-1999) for the 18th pick in the draft?
I heard this somewhere this week (bad paraphrase): “Trading one $18,000 item for three $6,000 items is not an even swap”
Even if the Seahawks gave up their first round picks in 2025 and 2026, I don’t think that’s as good as if the Patriots called and offered picks 4 and 38 in this year’s draft. Or if the Bears offered picks 10 and 39. The Browns should only want to trade Garrett if they think there’s some chance of getting another great player and even if Seattle tried to include players like DK Metcalf and Riq Woolen with a first round pick, that doesn’t even out when the Browns are trading a future Hall of Famer with years left in his prime.
My guess is that the despite this noise, Garrett signs an extension in Cleveland because $100 million tends to make anyone happy.
Roger Woitte: Could Russ be our bridge QB?
If the Seahawks release Geno Smith and open the job up to anybody available, then Russell Wilson becomes some sort of “option” because he’d need a job and Seattle would need a starting quarterback. That being said, Wilson is not the first, second, or probably even third option. I would say it’s unlikely.
If Geno and Kirk Cousins are both released, then Cousins’ insanely cheap price tag (not a guess, a fact) and his deep connections to Klint Kubiak and Andrew Janocko make him the most obvious candidate. At this point, Cousins has much closer ties to the Seahawks coaching staff than Wilson.
But let’s say Cousins isn’t released or he goes to another team, like say the 49ers or the Rams (also have Cousins ties), then I think Wilson just becomes one of a dozen quarterbacks that Seattle would consider.
Though Wilson and Kubiak did work together in 2022, it was the worst season of his career. And even if Wilson is relatively cheap, he’s not $1.2 million cheap.
If Schneider is trying to separate his track record from Pete Carroll’s and set his own course, the last quarterback he would want to bring in is Wilson and Schneider’s maybe the only person left on the Seahawks who could vouch for him.
I think the Seahawks already have an idea of who their 2025 starter is going to be and I don’t think it’s Wilson, so something will have had to go wrong for that to happen.
Rusty: If you were the GM, what would be your first two moves in free agency?
I’ll interpret this as “What are the first two things the Seahawks should do outside of their own home?” and it HAS to be go sign a guard and a center. Or two guards. Or a guard/center and a premium right tackle who pushes Abe Lucas inside. This has to be the offseason that finally forces the Seahawks to be aggressive with regards to the interior of the offensive line because if there’s one thing Schneider has to accomplish in 2025 it’s that he proves he can:
Identify the team’s greatest weakness
Fix the team’s greatest weakness
Even if Seattle doesn’t win a playoff game next season, if they show remarkable improvement in the trenches I think Seahawks fans will cut the GM a lot of slack because this is definitely what most of them have been asking to have for years.
If the Seahawks sign guard Trey Smith and then for whatever reason the move fails, I will personally throw a punch for John Schneider — in his defense — because that’s what WE asked him to do.
But if the Seahawks bring back some line that resembles the 2024 version and is the cheapest in the NFL again, and then that fails, what defense does he have? He’ll be gone.
I have a lot more Super Joes questions to get through, but I’ll cut today’s off here. Join the club to get in on the next on or if you just want to get bonus content/support the newsletter! I’ve been getting a lot of really nice messages from new subscribers lately and I don’t have a button to just reply and say thank you, let me say now that I read your testimonials and I thank you!
Seaside Joe 2167
SSJ I’m so in tune with what you’re espousing. So logical and so sensible, it’s hard to believe Schneider will do anything different.
Uchenna, Dre’Mont, No-E, both Fants, Pharaoh Brown, Jenkins and Rob-Harris, plus extending Geno and maybe DK, more than solves the riddle plus gives them lots of space for replacements of the above, or re-signing them at more realistic rates. I’m really excited at these prospects and REALLY hope Schneider is reading that statement of yours regarding two top FA’s on the OL — two guards, or a guard and center, or a guard and tackle that lets Lucas move inside. Knocking on wood…
Two OL in FA and a DE at pick 18 sounds like a great start to me! Per SSJ's ILB analysis last year, they can be had on day 2 and later. I am hoping to see all this on top of an EJ resigning at ILB. Mid and late round picks at DE, TE, WR, & QB to try and find some depth or diamonds in the proverbial rough would be lovely, as well.