The Seattle Seahawks made a big trade for Quenton Nelson, but will it be John Schneider’s last trade of 2026? There have been rumors of Seattle’s interest in adding a wide receiver prior to Tuesday’s 1 PM deadline and that makes sense because the weakness that will probably do the most to hold the Seahawks back from repeating as Super Bowl champions is their lack of a second option next to Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
Brian Thomas Jr., Josh Downs, Garrett Wilson, and George Pickens are the names often mentioned in the rumor mill. Calvin Ridley is the name I threw out many weeks ago simply because the Titans should not need a good draft pick to get a trade completed — but the downside is that he may not have anything left to give.
Realistically will any of those first four names be traded?
Downs has requested the Colts to trade him, but I don’t necessarily see him as someone who is going to be a significantly better option than Cooper Kupp or Rashid Shaheed.
Pickens was inactive this week with a hamstring issue, which the Cowboys insist is a real issue that could bother him and that he also has a shoulder injury—not something you tend to say as a smokescreen to convince other teams to take him. Pickens is also owed quite a lot of money. The Seahawks only have $4 million in cap space and Pickens is owed $13.6 million for the rest of the season. Based on my read of their 2026 cap situation, Seattle has no real opportunities to create $10 million in space. There is truly only one:
Restructure Sam Darnold’s contract.
This would save immediate cap space — by far the most on the team — but it would make him more expensive next season and it would alter Seattle’s options for what they can do with Darnold in 2027. That includes cutting him, trading him, or extending him. The end result may not be substantially different — and it might not even be enough immediate cap space to add someone like Pickens — but is it worth the trouble when the benefit is renting a receiver who will be a free agent at the end of the season…and is injured…and has always been inconsistent?
I don’t see the Seahawks creating at least $10 million in cap space to trade a good draft pick for George Pickens. I also don’t think Dallas wants any of Seattle’s overpaid players to offset the cost; and to make them eat any of the money would necessitate giving up a first-round pick that Pickens ISN’T WORTH.
Wilson is the guy who — if reunited with college teammate Smith-Njigba — would give the Seahawks virtually everything they want in a receiver:
He’s only owed $2 million this year
He’s only 26
He can either play opposite of JSN or in the slot
He’s yet to even really show how good he is
Wilson is on pace for another 1,000-yard season despite playing with the Jets for his entire career. But if you put him on the Seahawks next to JSN, he’s capable of averaging 80-90 yards per game. Kupp and Shaheed? 20-25 yards per game.
Wilson is still a story too good to be true.
Nobody with connections inside the Jets believes that New York has any desire to trade him, meaning that the team would want at least a first-round pick (and from a good team like Seattle picking late on day one, substantially more) to change their minds.
“It is very unlikely to happen,” one team source says.
The Jets only traded Sauce Gardner last year because they got two first-round picks. They got a first and a second for Quinnen Williams.
Wilson is also in the concussion protocol and his four-year, $130 million extension doesn’t kick in until 2027. He’s owed a $20 million roster bonus next year and his $13 million salary is guaranteed, meaning that Seattle better have $33 million set aside for him; their projected cap space for 2027? $34 million.
So Garrett Wilson is the perfect answer if “football?” was the only question, but to actually get him would require Schneider giving up Seattle’s first and second-round picks in 2027 and also being prepared to pay him next year when they’ve already started to commit to extending Nelson at some point.
That is very much not what the Seahawks should do.
This leaves us with Brian Thomas Jr, a standout rookie in 2024 who has since had one of the most unusual career tanks that we’ve ever seen.
The Jaguars made three trades on Monday for defensive help, but surprisingly they’re probably just as much in need of a standout skill player as any Super Bowl contender—and yet they don’t even use a guy who had 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns as a rookie. Jacksonville has consistently dialed back his playing time, his opportunities, and turned to options like 30-year-old Jakobi Myers because Trevor Lawrence just trusts everyone else more.
Over the last seven games, Thomas has caught 7-of-19 targets for 77 yards and he’s been benched.
We’ve seen this happen to highly-touted prospects who were never good. This is the only time I can remember it happening to a first-round pick who was one of the best receivers in the NFL as a rookie—and the slide already started by year two.
That is such a HUGE RED FLAG and anyone who says “We’ll fix him” has clearly never had to deal with someone who wasted their potential so dramatically.
All that being said, Thomas is owed virtually nothing in 2026 and 2027. If Jacksonville wants a second-round pick for him? You DON’T do that. But if they’re just trying to get rid of him and move him out of the AFC and asking for a conditional fourth-round pick in 2028, maybe that’s a fair risk.
My Take
My take is that the timing isn’t good for the Seahawks to trade for a receiver — or really most players — because they’ve already made this move for Nelson and that ate up the majority of the cap space they had. Now making moves requires adding cheap players (like BTJ or Ridley) or restructuring contracts that Seattle likely doesn’t want to touch.
This is the bed Schneider made for the receiver room when the Seahawks didn’t cut Kupp and did extend Shaheed. So in a way, those are Seattle’s moves for the rest of the season.
To hope that Shaheed can be more productive when he returns from a knee injury and/or that other options like A.J. Barner or Tory Horton will be better second-half receivers than what Seattle would get out of a BTJ or a Ridley or even a Josh Downs—and I think that’s a reasonable conclusion to draw.
Pickens and Wilson are unaffordable under most rational circumstances.
Kupp is always going to be good for 1 to 3 first downs per game — which is great — and maybe two more touchdowns for the rest of the season. But I wouldn’t expect him to draw any attention away from JSN or to even warrant more than a few targets.
If the Seahawks do go any route on Tuesday, maybe they explore a pure pass rusher — the Eagles traded Jordan Davis, would they consider moving Nolan Smith? — to complement a room of stout run defenders on the edge but lacking juice when it comes to pressuring the quarterback.
That route may be more likely to help make the Seahawks better over the rest of the season compared to the realistically-available options at receiver who probably don’t represent substantial upgrades over who Seattle already has. That’s why I said flipping a seventh-round pick for Ridley makes the most sense, simply out of cost-benefit, not because he’s going to revert back to who he was a few years ago.
I don’t expect the Seahawks to make a trade today—but if they do (and it wouldn’t shock me if they do) I think it’ll either be a lot less exciting than Quenton Nelson or come so far out of left field that nobody predicted it.
Speaking of predictions…
Greatest Expectation 2026 TOP 10 LEADERBOARD!
It is my great pleasure to announce that Week 9’s winner of Greatest Expectations is … AggieHawk! Many of you regular commenters probably saw a very kind message left by AggieHawk last week, and in fact several of you emailed me to express that you were touched by what he wrote.
So it is merely out of coincidence — or fate — that he won the week! AggieHawk correctly predicted that Emmanwori would win DPOG, Dickson would win STPOG, J. Price would have second-most receiving yards, was within four points of Seattle’s score, within nine yards of Drew Lock’s total, and was the second-closest to JSN’s final yardage.
In a way, AggieHawk won because he didn’t expect too much. Seattle didn’t deliver too much. Since I started taking names in Week 3, here are the eight winners thus far:
2026 WEEKLY FIRST-PLACE FINISHERS
Week 3 vs. Commanders: Bret
Week 4 vs. Chargers: McKinley
Week 5 vs. 49ers: Seaside Ryan
Week 6 vs. Broncos: Kelly Mamer
Week 7 vs. Chiefs: Anon1 or Stu*
Week 8 vs. Bears: Zezinhom400
Week 9 vs. Cardinals: AggieHawk
*Stu wins if we award Nick Emmanwori partial credit for forcing an interception; your votes did award Nick E. with a TO.
This new weekly exercise has really locked something inside of me that I didn’t know was there: A desire to be the commissioner of a game.
I love seeing your entries and then tabulating winners, so let’s expand this out from weekly leaders to season leaders.
SEASIDE JOE LEADERBOARD: AVERAGE WEEKLY PERCENTILE
Weeks 3–9. Minimum five entries. Higher is better. A 76.8 percentile means an average finish around the top 23% of the weekly field.
Mike Ney — 76.8 percentile. Best finish: 2nd.
Big G — 71.0 percentile. Best finish: 7th.
Philipp Reitter — 67.7 percentile. Best finish: 17th.
Bookie Bob — 67.6 percentile. Best finish: 6th.
Largentium — 67.1 percentile. Best finish: 10th.
Jim — 66.9 percentile. Best finish: 16th.
Phil W — 66.8 percentile. Best finish: 8th.
AggieHawk — 66.5 percentile. Best finish: 1st.
HuevoBueno — 65.7 percentile. Best finish: 2nd.
Maxx — 65.4 percentile. Best finish: 8th.
Although Mike Ney has never finished first (narrowly missing in Week 6, but I could have probably swung it that way), he has finished second, sixth, and sixth in three of the last four weeks. That’s INCREDIBLE. He has two other top-20 finishes and that’s why Ney leads the leaderboard.
Similarly, Big G hasn’t finished top 5 yet, but is consistently in the top 30 percent. In fact, Aggie is the only winner in the top 10.
So I needed to look at another method. Points rewarding high finishes.
SEASON LEADERBOARD: POINTS BASED
Weeks 3–9. No participation minimum. Points for Top 10 Finishes
1st: Mike Ney — 31 points.
1st: Zezinhom400 — 31 points.
3rd: Kelly Mamer — 27 points.
4th: Bret — 26 points.
4th: AggieHawk — 26 points.
6th: Seaside Ryan — 25 points.
7th: Anon1 — 24 points.
8th: HuevoBueno — 23 points.
9th: Todd Murren — 22 points.
9th: Stu — 22 points.
20 points for a first place finish, 15 points for second, 10 points for third, 5 points for 5-10th, and 2 points for 11-20th, 1 point for everyone else.
Even with this method, Ney is in first place. Or is tied for first with zezinhom400. If I had given Mike the win in Week 6, he’d have 36 points and Kelly would have 22 points.
These were arbitrary scoring decisions I made though, so it is likely something that will evolve as I understand what I’m doing better.
And if you’re reading this and you dropped out early or you haven’t played yet—It’s not too late to catch up and reach the top 10!
You win this week, you immediately get 20 points. If you have merely participated recently, you could be in the top 10 with one win. (By the way if you think I haven’t correctly added up your score because you’ve used different screen names, you’ll have to tell me. I can only go off of the names you submit.)
Or just think if you’re Bret and you win this week, you’ll wake up on Monday with 46 points. That’s huge.
But you can only score if you play. Maybe I’ll see you this time.
It kinda looks like MM is going to sleep in the bed Schneider made.
Not that it helps now, but it looks like there will be plenty of Day 2 options at WR in the 2027 draft. I can’t see passing on the opportunity to get one of those in order to bring any of the veterans on SJ’s list.
I'm up for us finding a WR after watching Horton continue to drop passes he was catching last year prior to exiting the season with injuries. I agree Wilson holds the ticket with his agreeable play with JSN in college. He could use some encouragement. And let's not underestimate the allure of going to a real SB Contender. JS is the best at sweetening the pot next year and the year after.