💰OL cap numbers are MISLEADING

Understand the SALARY CAP before you TWEET

Though the Seahawks do pinch pennies on the offensive line, equating their 2024 cap number directly to poor results is a FALSE EQUIVALENCE that requires more context. These are cap-related facts that you MUST know before you continue reading:

• Some of the BEST OL in the NFL are cheap

• Many of the WORST OL are overpaid

• Teams often LOWER cap numbers, which doesn’t make the player cheaper

• One season cap numbers ≠ INVESTMENTS

The Seahawks could come back with the exact same offensive line in 2025, same players = more expensive, but that doesn’t guarantee the offensive line will be better. Seattle could copy the Panthers — they overpaid and have $91 million (!!) going to OL next year — and maybe the Seahawks could become the next worst team.

So when I see Seahawks fans buying into reporting like this, I want to add context:

I’ve made the same mistake as Corbin and we need to be BETTER. Seattle has a long history of building the team from the outside in, and that is not likely to change, but OLs don’t automatically improve because GMs allocate more SALARY CAP to it: They draft well, develop, and take time (more than 0 years) to reach the top.

BY THE NUMBERS

Corbin’s tweet highlights how different the main two salary cap sites are: OverTheCap.com has the Seahawks last in OL spending at $22.3 million, while Spotrac has $16.2 million. This is due to Spotrac not counting players on IR (Fant, Lucas, Forsythe) and that is not how the cap works.

The Seahawks are last in either case, but the Saints are 17th in total OL spending (not 30th) and the Patriots are 23rd (not 31st), so right off the bat we know we are being misled:

Case in point: The Rams have over $27 million in OL on injured reserve, MORE than what the Seahawks pay their ENTIRE OL. The Rams are second in OL spending — 3x what the Seahawks pay — so are they “better” than Seattle’s OL because they have overpaid players?

ELITE DOESN’T MEAN EXPENSIVE:

Every team has cap experts who are “puzzle masters”: Their sole job is to take all the contracts of the team and figure out how to make them fit together over a period of YEARS, not just the current season.

The Lions have the best OL, yet they’re 10th in 2024 OL cap spending. How could this be after they paid RT Penei Sewell $28 million per year, LT Taylor Decker $20 million, and Frank Ragnow as the 2nd-highest paid C? Because a player’s CAP NUMBER is NOT the same as his CONTRACT:

• Sewell’s AAV from 2024-2025 is only $9 million

• Detroit restructured Decker to lower his salary, a common NFL practice to “fudge” cap numbers

• Ragnow’s extension purposefully came with low 2024 number

Even with signing veterans guards to deals richer than ANY contract on Seattle’s OL, the Lions strategically pushed their OL cap hits into 2026.

The Seahawks are even attempting to COPY the Lions process — draft a first round OT (Cross), and players you hope to develop into being worthy of extensions (Bradford, Haynes, Lucas, Jerrell) — but fans have lost patience before the team has had a chance to prove if their plan will work.

There is no shortcut to development: The “amazing” Lions offensive line took SEVEN YEARS to come together (2016-2022). Imagine how lucky Seattle would be if the Seahawks could do it in four!

EXPENSIVE DOESN’T MEAN ELITE:

If “you get what you pay for” then I guess the Panthers are going to have the best offensive line in NFL history in 2025: $91.4 MILLION FOR ONE SEASON.

The Seahawks could not match Carolina’s offer to Damien Lewis (4 years, $53 million) as a guard who OFTEN drew ire of fans for mediocre play and penalties. Corbin uses PFF grades as a measure of quality…Lewis was among PFF’s lowest-graded guards in 2023, so was it wise to pay him $13 million per year?

Even if you argued that the Panthers have a top-5 offensive line, they’re still THE WORST TEAM while paying $34 million in average salary to 2 guards and a (bad) center, and they traded Brian Burns for poor value because they didn’t want to pay an EDGE RUSHER over a GUARD.

OL development = Scouting + Coaching

OL development ≠ “Just pay more money next time”

The Seahawks could decide they want to sign the most expensive guard in free agency, but John Schneider will get a number from Jody Allen called “This is how much CASH you can spend in signing bonuses” and if they pay $26.5 million of that to a guard like the Panthers did for Robert Hunt, that’s $26.5 million that won’t go somewhere else.

It’s a strategy that is not inherently flawed. The flaw is thinking that the more you pay, the better you are.

The cherry picking of it all

The ONLY way to make Corbin’s tweet be so anti-Seahawks was exactly how he tweeted it:

• He couldn’t used OTC’s numbers

• The Packers are 29th in spending but ranked as a top-5 OL

• The Bills are 28th in OL$, consistently in the top-10

• The Rams are 2nd in OL$, but not getting return on investment

• The Jaguars spend 2x on OL$ as Seattle, but ranked the same

As bad as it feels to watch the Lions and then the Seahawks, remember that it also hurts to watch the Colts, Rams, and Panthers, the teams that spend the MOST on offensive line. Or Seattle could re-allocate money away from other units to OL, and that could work, but it’s harder to imagine that while the defense is this bad.

The worst part about trying to convince yourself that the Seahawks will become a top-5 offense next year if they sign the most expensive guard in free agency would be that you might end up believing it.

TRADING DK METCALF HAS ITS BENEFITS