The most financially responsible Seahawks offseason

With AND Without Geno Smith

How much confidence the Seahawks have in the players who are currently contracted to be on the team in 2025 will be the determining factor in how much of the roster returns next season, but more importantly those decisions will impact how much cap space Seattle has to upgrade the team’s weaknesses.

If the Seahawks believe they have to keep most of the same guys and only need one or two upgrades in the offseason in order to win the Super Bowl twelve months from now, they better be right:

Because if Seattle keeps status quo and doesn’t release/trade their highest-paid players, let alone if they extend some of them, they will only find it more difficult to win a Super Bowl after 2025. On the other hand, if the Seahawks have the most financially responsible offseason available to them in the 2025 offseason, they could still compete just the same next season and also they will have some of the most power in the league when they get to 2026.

That should include:

• Avoiding an extension for DK Metcalf

• Avoiding an extension for Geno Smith

• Cutting veterans who could be replaced by cheaper veterans and rookies

In a series of posts this week, Seaside Joe will highlight the most financially responsible Seahawks offseason plan: One that keeps Geno Smith and one that does not.

Today’s first post will be free to all subscribers. If you want to continue the series, join Regular Joes for only $5 per month or $55 for an entire year:

The most financially responsible offseason WITH Geno

2025 salary cap commitments (as of 2/12): $294.4 million

Right off the top, the Seahawks can cut this number down to $250.1 million — a drop of $44.3 million — by releasing these five players:

• WR Tyler Lockett

• OT George Fant

• OLB Dre’Mont Jones

• S Rayshawn Jenkins

• DT Roy Robertson-Harris

None of these moves should be controversial. If anything, Fant is the player most worth retaining because the cap savings ($3.8m) is the least valuable and a replacement is going to cost at least $1 million, if not more than what the team saves by cutting Fant. He’s not a starter, but he also wasn’t signed to be a starter so if he regains his health then he could go back to filling the role of a utility backup.

Even so, these moves get the Seahawks within a reasonable place for cap room…projected to be around $30 million.

You may be asking: “Couldn’t the Seahawks save more money with post-June 1 releases for any/all of these players?”

Only if the goal is to save more cap space in 2025. There’s nothing more financially responsible about a post-June 1 designation, all that does is push the team’s cap penalties into the future which in many cases can be less financially responsible.

But this is not “What are the moves I’d like the most as a fan” article. This is the “MOST financially responsible offseason” article. We can’t stop at $30 million in cap space — and paying players that are well liked at the cost of searching for players are who better values.

Other Moves

Release Uchenna Nwosu

We should know within 24 hours if the Seahawks plan to keep Uchenna Nwosu, but a release would save another $8.1 million and get Seattle closer to $40 million in cap space. It's more financially responsible to release Nwosu with an understanding to bring him back than it is to pay $15m+ cash for a pass rusher with 3 sacks in the last two years.

Nwosu Release Update:

$242 million in liabilities, $39 million projected 2025 cap space

Trade DK Metcalf

At $18 million in base salary and a $32 million cap hit in 2025, Metcalf is right on the borderline for being a bad value. He’s not a top-10 receiver by any measure, but his cap hit is the third-highest in the NFL (Lockett’s is fourth) and he will move up a spot when the Jets release Davante Adams.

That being said, $18 million in cash is reasonable for a receiver who has proven that under the right circumstances he can be productive.

The real reason that trading Metcalf is “most financially responsible” is that receivers like him do not tend to let their contracts play out until their conclusion. He will want an extension and the team that employs him — whether that’s the Seahawks or someone else — will be inclined to do something to bring down his cap hit.

Metcalf turns 28 in December and while that may not sound like a big deal…it 100% is a big deal:

• Out of the top-13 receivers in yards in 2024, the OLDEST was 25.

• Not a single receiver over 25 had over 1,100 yards

• This is in a 17-game season, making “1,100 the new 1,000”

The NFL’s crop of “older” receivers who had quadruple-digit production included Terry McLaurin, Courtland Sutton, A.J. Brown, Adams, Jakobi Meyers, Calvin Ridley, and Mike Evans. Of those, the only three over 29 are Adams, Ridley, and Evans.

An extension for Metcalf means that his team will be paying him starting when he turns 30.

And this is how a team ends up paying Cooper Kupp over $40 million for one season and then putting him on the trade block because the Rams extended Kupp when he was 29. The Rams will have a really hard time trading Kupp’s contract, and the same situation is playing out in San Francisco with the 29-year-old Deebo Samuel on the trade block.

If Metcalf plays out the final year of his deal, that could be construed as “financially responsible” because the $10 million in cap savings by trading/releasing him might be less than the cost to replace him. HOWEVER, extending Metcalf is the second least financially responsible thing the Seahawks could do in 2025.

DK Metcalf trade update:

$231.1 million in liabilites, $49.8 million in projected 2025 cap space

Add Back: If the Seahawks trade Metcalf for a day 2 draft pick in 2025, then we would have to subtract the cost of the rookie they select if they use the pick. But if they acquire a player, we have to subtract the value of that player’s contract.

As I can’t project what the Seahawks would get for Metcalf in trade, including maybe a player (example: Seahawks trade Metcalf to Rams for Jonah Jackson, essentially offsetting the savings but getting a guard/center), I don’t know what their end result would be. But I assume they could get a second round pick in 2025 or 2026, which is only about $1 million in immediate cap space.

Keep Noah Fant

Despite all the articles about Fant being a disappointment, and the $8.5 million saved if he’s released or traded, it is more responsible to keep him after releasing Lockett and trading Metcalf. The Seahawks have to have someone else besides Jaxon Smith-Njigba to throw the ball to and Fant presents as a viable “WR2” who might have a breakout season under these circumstances.

If Klint Kubiak has a lot of confidence in what he can do with Fant, it might even be wise to add two more years to his contract and bring his cap number down with an extension.

Seattle would still have a need at wide receiver and that’s something that they should feel comfortable with addressing in the draft and the second or third week of free agency.

Trade Tariq Woolen

Most 5th round picks would be bargains on the fourth year of their rookie contracts, but Woolen’s Pro Bowl rookie campaign boosted his salary to $5.2 million. Trading Woolen comes down to Mike Macdonald’s belief in him as either a long-term starter on Seattle’s defense or if the Seahawks expect him to leave in free agency next year.

If Macdonald believes in Woolen, that’s good enough for me. But in the interest of being financially-responsible, the $5 million and returning draft pick is enough to think that Seattle’s biggest need is not at cornerback and that the team may let him leave in free agency anyway. In that case, the Seahawks could just get a draft pick now rather than hope for a comp pick in 2027.

Tariq Woolen trade update:

$225.9 million in liabilites, $55 million in projected 2025 cap space

What to do with Jason Myers

He’s making the most cash among all kickers in 2025 ($4.95m salary) but Myers also made a career-best nine kicks from 50+. It’s most financially responsible to part with Myers, but look what’s happening to Seattle’s roster during this experiment: Lots of good players on the way out, plenty of work to do to replace them with new starters.

If the Seahawks end up in a lot of tight games, a bad kicker could be the difference of several wins or several losses.

The goal of this article isn’t “How do the Seahawks tank?” so if they really want to push Myers, they can bring in competition and then make the decision about his contract in August.

Geno Smith: DO NOTHING!

Since this is the “With Geno” half of the article, there may be questions of how to bring down his cap number in order to keep him. Simple: DON’T DO ANYTHING!

Okay fine, maybe Geno is making too much money. Should he be taking up almost 16% of the cap:

That’s an extraordinary percentage for a quarterback still seeking his first career playoff win. But did we learn anything from the Cowboys and Dak Prescott?

Prescott had a huge cap number coming in 2024 and Dallas brought it down to $44.6 million with an extension. Well, what’s his cap number in 2025 now?

$89.9 million!!!!

The Cowboys will now spend the next several years moving money around just to be able to operate as a franchise around Dak (who isn’t that level of QB who is going to carry a team to the Super Bowl) when all they really had to do was suck it up for two years and be off the hook from Dak’s $ by 2026.

Now they’ll be paying for this decision through at least 2028.

The most financially responsible thing to do with Geno and still keep him is to do nothing. If he’s really a franchise quarterback, he’ll play out his contract and have the confidence in himself to be worth an extension — or a contract with a new team — in 2026.

We’ve just cleared out enough money to have $55 million to build a roster WITH Geno Smith and that’s plenty. Then the Seahawks will be projected for $200 million in cap space in 2026 (some of that’s about to get eaten up of course) and that’s more than enough to sign a quarterback, including Geno.

Just do nothing. It’s not complicated.

$225.9 million in liabilites, $55 million in projected 2025 cap space

Now What?

The Good News:

• The Seahawks kept most of their good players

• Geno Smith remains on the roster w/o an extension

• $55 million puts Seattle in the top-10 for cap space

Other than trading Metcalf, I don’t see how the Seahawks end up with any potential “downgrades” from any of these moves. It’s more money to spend and a couple more draft picks.

The Bad News:

• Need to replace ~5 starters, lots of depth

• A little over $65 million in dead money in 2025

• Shaking up the locker room after going “10-7”

(In quotes because the Seahawks were 9-7 until squeaking by the Rams backups)

Other than the dead money, none of this necessarily has to be “bad” news. Does the locker room need to be shaken up a little bit? Pete Carroll turned over almost the entire roster between his arrival and the 2012 season when the Seahawks started to win meaningful games again. Most of the parting players were not picked in the Macdonald era.

Do some players need the wake up call that comes with trading a guy like DK or Woolen?

It’s a lot of dead money, but Seattle just needs to get through one year of that just as they did without Russell Wilson in 2022, which worked out fine.

The $55 million will go towards retaining a few key free agents (of which there are truly only a few, maybe only two at the most) and upgrading major weaknesses on the offensive line, as well as filling out the new holes created at receiver, edge, and corner. With all the cash saved, the Seahawks could go after one or two marquee free agents because they have so few remaining liabilities in 2026 and 2027.

Which free agents will the Seahawks keep and add with this money?

I’ll address that in the next edition of this series, as well as how much different this picture would look without Geno Smith.

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