5 players who could be Seahawks' next trade win

The Seahawks built a championship nucleus through trade aggressiveness, so fans shouldn't expect John Schneider to change that mode this year

The Seattle Seahawks would not have won the Super Bowl without bold trades, and John Schneider is on a generational run of winning almost every deal he’s made in the past four years. The nucleus of Seattle’s championship roster can be boiled down to Schneider’s willingness to part with a pair of quarterbacks, a talented-but-flawed receiver, and a handful of picks between rounds two and five.

With trade deadline deals in each of the past three years, adding Leonard Williams, Ernest Jones, and Rashid Shaheed to the roster, why shouldn’t Seahawks fans expect to happen in 2026?

These five players could be next.

EDGE Maxx Crosby

Who could be more likely to be traded than a player who has already been traded? Maxx Crosby’s trade to the Baltimore Ravens was nixed over a failed physical, but how much will his stock recover by making it through training camp and/or the start of the regular season without any issues?

The Raiders think that Crosby will be ready for training camp and their motivation for getting him back could solely revolve around their desire to trade him again. He was in good spirits during a recent celebrity boxing event, and yes this was a real question he was asked:

ESPN’s Brady Henderson tweeted last October that Schneider tried to trade for Crosby at the 2025 combine and fell short of the Las Vegas asking price. The same general manager is still in place, Schneider already knows where the conversation will start, and he has experience pushing a team into lowering the asking price from the deal he made in 2010 to acquire Marshawn Lynch after months of trying.

When he wants a player, he doesn’t stop until he gets him.

And the Raiders aren’t going to get two first-round picks again like they did when the Ravens almost acquired Crosby. It’s almost like waiting for a movie to come to streaming (previously known as Blu-Ray, or dare I say VHS) rather than paying even more to see it in a theater. Waiting or being rejected might actually work in Schneider’s favor, just as he got Leonard Williams and Lynch without giving up a first-round pick.

If Crosby forces GM John Spytek’s hand to trade him, the trade price could drop dramatically. The bigger question for Seattle might be the contract:

• $30 million guaranteed in 2026

• $29 million guaranteed in 2027

Not only do the Seahawks have the sixth-most cap space in the NFL going into the rest of the offseason, they have opportunities to create more with restructures or extensions for players like Williams and Uchenna Nwosu. Seattle would save $22 million by restructuring Sam Darnold, more than enough to add an expensive asset like Crosby.

The questions isn’t really whether the Seahawks are willing to pay Crosby $59 million over the next two seasons, but instead if they are open to extending him through 2028.

The Eagles just signed Jonathan Greenard to a two-year, $60 million deal, which is important because nobody puts Crosby and Greenard on the same level. The only thing that could level the playing field is Crosby’s knee injury.

Now that a $45-$50 million per season tier has been created with extensions for Will Anderson, Micah Parsons, and Aidan Hutchinson, I bet Crosby expects to be up there with them on a new deal. Seattle might have to decide if they would be willing to extend Crosby on a three-year, $135 million contract, which is obviously a lot of money but also brings down his 2026 cap hit.

The other thing the Seahawks could do to offset a small chunk of that change is include Nwosu in the deal and send him to the Raiders. At least Klint Kubiak will be able to vouch for his value to a defense.

Is a first round pick in 2027 and a second round pick in 2028 too much for Maxx Crosby?

I still have my doubts

I laid out concerns with Maxx Crosby in February, noting that despite being 28 there is a lot of wear and tear on his tires:

Yeah, it wasn’t considered “serious” knee surgery, but when is it never not serious when it’s a lower-body injury for a player who wants that much money and would cost a first round pick+more? This is when I start to get the feelings of “Oh this is gonna be one of those guys who is supposed to be ready for training camp and then we get to the middle of training camp and he hasn’t practiced yet.” I don’t love that.

I also think he’s a great player and that every team wants to have four or five Crosbys in the locker room. Regardless of whatever issues he has with the team right now, Crosby has put up with seven seasons of playing for the Raiders and never complained about being in that situation.

But every hypothetical scenario around Crosby relies on him proving that he’s in the middle of his career, not the end of it. If Crosby shows up and proves that — similar to Duane Brown with the Texans in 2017 by playing for Houston long enough to get traded — it’s not hard to see Schneider testing the waters again.

This next player is not as likely to be traded this year, but is an even bigger superstar than Maxx Crosby and could force his current team to trade him sooner than anyone thinks.