Should Seahawks Extend Uchenna Nwosu?

Seattle’s next extension candidates, Jalen Milroe’s absence of evidence is not evidence, and why Mike Macdonald won’t cede plays to Aden Durde

The Seattle Seahawks have spent $390 million in cash on players in 2026, or in other words, about 4 percent of their sale price. Between the Jaxon Smith-Njigba extension, the Devon Witherspoon extension, and everything in between, Seattle hasn’t been afraid to push around their wealth to win another Super Bowl…contrary to those free agency narratives you heard.

And here’s the (potentially literal) kicker: They’re probably not done yet.

Curtis Allen@curtis93969

The #seahawks were about #12 in 2026 cash spending per OTC at $362m spent ($301m base salary cap). With the Witherspoon contract that vaults them into the top 3 with somewhere in the $390m range. When Jody told John Schneider "let it rip" this offseason, she wasn't joking.

7:45 PM · Aug 15, 2026 · 8.41K Views

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2 Replies · 6 Reposts · 230 Likes

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Danno: Do you have a feeling about which 2027 free agents might be signed before the season started? Leo, Bradford, Myers, Sundell or some other surprise? I think there are about 19 players who will be some sort of free agents next offseason not counting the UDFAs and the back end of the roster.

I don’t expect Anthony Bradford’s contract season to go any differently than Damien Lewis’s in 2023. So, no extension, no renewal next year. I think John Schneider feels he’s probably invested enough in the offensive line, but you never know.

It might make sense to extend Jason Myers now. He actually has a pretty high cap number ($7.2 million) and I don’t anticipate this being his last year with Seattle. Myers might even be a guy who the Seahawks start seeing as a legacy-type player who they want to have around for many years as their own version of Adam Vinatieri, like raising the 12 flag in 2040.

Jalen Sundell is a bit more complicated. There are now centers out there making $17-$18 million per season (not even going to include Tyler Linderbaum’s absurd $27m AAV) who maybe are not even that good. So if I’m Sundell’s agent, I might hold out until I get a ridiculous offer, the type that Schneider isn’t likely to give a center. I think the team would feel more comfortable if they saw another season from Sundell first and he’s only a restricted free agent in 2027 anyway. There’s no rush there.

And I think Leonard Williams wants big-big money. It’s actually crazy that there hasn’t been any buzz about him being unhappy with his contract. Either they’re doing a good job of hiding it or he really is that chill. Did you realize that Jalen Carter ($38 AAV) makes almost twice what Williams makes ($21.5 AAV). Williams should at least be asking for $35 AAV and even if he only gets $32 AAV, that’s a lot more than he’s currently making.

He could be content with hitting free agency next year and then he can squeeze a team like the Raiders for $40 AAV. Or he just wants to win more Super Bowls with the Seahawks, I guess we’ll find out.

One more you didn’t mention is Uchenna Nwosu. Although he isn’t a star, Nwosu’s at a position that Seattle is running out of options for in 2027 (DeMarcus Lawrence already announced his 2027 retirement plans) and maybe the Seahawks could offer him the contract that they didn’t offer to Boye Mafe. Something like two more years for $40 million, half of it guaranteed.

MarkE: Is there any trade market value for Milroe? I really want him to work out but am losing confidence every day. Presumably though that also translates to how much someone will part with to try and reclaim him.

Not that long ago, every team in the NFL knew about Jalen Milroe, had studied him for two years as a starter at Alabama, and passed on him in the draft at least once. And for context, when the Seahawks drafted David Greene in 2005, they used the 85th pick. Milroe was the 92nd pick.

Do they now call teams and say, “You know Jalen? Yeah, him. Well, he’s actually better than you thought. No we’re not ‘giving up on him’, we just think you guys would be better for each other because we’ve got a long-term thing going on now that we didn’t know we’d have”?

I say that not to mock anyone, and certainly not mock the question, but to set a trade value bar no better than day three. It couldn’t be more than a sixth-round pick and Seattle’s not lacking picks next year. If Milroe is worth practically anything to the team, the juice of a trade isn’t worth the squeeze.

Then there’s the question of whether any team could even fit him onto their roster this late. I don’t know about that.

I’d actually say that if the opinion of Milroe got to the point where he was that bad, he might make it through waivers if the Seahawks cut him, and then they could put him on the practice squad.

That’s going to sound crazy to some of you—maybe it is—but I don’t think most fans realize how little most teams thought of Milroe’s future as an NFL quarterback, or how few open spots there are for quarterbacks:

• He won’t be considered a backup, so he has to be a QB3

• A lot of teams don’t keep QB3

• Most, if not all teams like their QB3 more than they like Milroe

For example, the Cardinals’ QB3 is Carson Beck, their third-round pick. They’re not going to cut him or Gardner Minshew for Milroe.

Almost every team already has a “Jalen Milroe” of their own, so they’re not likely to shake things up for a quarterback who they have to start all over from scratch with in September.

When push comes to shove, there’s always at least one team that’s so bad that they have no reason not to take a low-percentage shot on a recently-drafted quarterback (for example, I could see the Dolphins claiming him) so I bet Milroe would get claimed. However, if the Seahawks got to the point where they would trade Milroe before his second season (even David Greene made it through two years before he was cut), it’s unlikely teams would be clamoring to win the sweepstakes. Maybe they could get another “change of scenery” player in return.

Cavmax: Still on Milroe and I appreciate your article and assessment but I want to ask if better play calling designed specifically for the young qb might have a different result?

I think any writer who tries to answer this question needs to have an explanation for what makes them qualified to overrule the entire Seahawks offensive coaching staff. It doesn’t make the coaches “right” just because they know more than we do, but I don’t feel like it would be fair for me to answer it with a straight face.

With questions about players like this one, I always think about an analogous situation at work, something almost everybody understands:

Do you work with people who are smart and valuable, but difficult to get along with? Do you work with people who are nice and funny, but bad at their jobs and difficult to teach? Do you work with someone who has potential, but turns in shoddy work because they’re distracted with something else?

Then imagine if someone else who didn’t work at your company said, “Hey you work with Greg, right? He seems super talented, I should hire Greg.”

And in your mind you’re thinking to yourself, “Please do, I can’t stand Greg” or “Greg’s cool, but I won’t tell this guy that he became a CEO despite refusing to learn how to read!”

That personal everyday interaction can’t be replicated with imagination. You can only live it with actual experience. I don’t have the experience with Milroe—or any Seahawks—and so I can’t tell you how difficult it is to build the “better offense” for him that you wish to see. Maybe it’s there. But it probably isn’t because it’s a bigger jump in logic to assume that Seattle’s entire coaching staff is simply ignorant to the fact that all they had to do for Milroe was “call better plays”.

If you can think of that explanation, I’m sure they can think of it too.

I do know that when Bears fans and the media insisted that the team was “failing Justin Fields” by not building an offense specifically designed for the skills he had because he couldn’t and wouldn’t develop the skills that he didn’t have, coaches got fired and Chicago’s offense got worse as they leaned more and more into his rushing abilities.

Many people still don’t accept that Fields is just not good enough for the NFL and most quarterbacks aren’t good enough for the NFL.

As for writing about the game that Milroe played, that’s all I can do. I can only write about and assess what happened, not what might have happened. I’m reading the book Hitchcock/Truffaut right now, in which the director Francis Truffaut interviews Alfred Hitchcock about his career.

And this question makes me think of what it’s like to be a master filmmaker like Hitchcock, in many ways setting what would be the standard for making movies over the next 100 years, Even if you don’t like Hitchcock movies, his massive influence on the industry is undeniable.

Then you watch most movies today and they’re absolutely terrible.

Well, I could tell you about a movie that I dislike. Let’s say Passenger, which is a horror movie that came out earlier this year, in some ways maybe even a film that aspires to be “Hitchcockian”. And someone could start defending the director by telling me that it wasn’t his fault, it was the acting that made it bad, or the cinematography, or the producers who kept forcing him to change the movie and their notes made it worse.

Am I supposed to judge the movie I saw or an imaginary movie that wasn’t made?

This is the NFL. Very few make it. Even fewer quarterbacks. It’s time to start making your own luck because nobody’s going to make it for you. Milroe and Mike Macdonald aren’t making excuses, so neither should we.

There are two more preseason games to go, I’m rooting for Jalen Milroe and I’ll leave it at that. The whole Milroe situation is also very, very unimportant relative to the team’s goal to win the Super Bowl this season, but I understand that because the preseason itself is so relatively unimportant, the preseason quarterback consumes almost all of our thoughts in August.

He’ll be out of your brain entirely by September, just as he was last year.

Ray: Our beloved Seahawks looked horrible on Saturday afternoon. Is there any particular reason I shouldn't sell everything I own and move to Point Roberts?

Not the Seahawks. “Seahawks uniforms”.

It’s sort of like Asylum movies. Do you know what Asylum is? They make low-budget, AI versions of blockbuster movies so that they can extract a few extra dollars off of the wave of interest in the popular, mainstream version. Maybe even trick some people into watching it because they think it’s the movie. Like this:

You didn’t watch The Seahawks on Saturday. You watched “Asylum’s The Seahawks”. There’s a big difference.

Maxx: What differences do you anticipate in the next game vs. Tennessee when Coach Mac takes over defensive play calling? And does that mean the end of Aden Durde calling plays for the rest of the season?

Yes, here’s what Macdonald said about it after the game:

Aden Durde has called the majority of the camp, defense, and today: "A lot of great stuff. I got to get ready to call plays. I think I'll call plays next week."

Macdonald says “I got to get ready to call plays”, implying that he’s going to call plays for the entire season again. I don’t really see why he wouldn’t. There’s no benefit to giving play calling duties to Durde when the defense is still expected to be tops in the league. As we’ve seen with the Rams, offensive coordinators do not get fewer jobs out of there even though Sean McVay has always called the plays.

So it doesn’t really impact Durde’s job resume negatively. If anything, it probably helps because now he can’t put bad play calling on film. And Macdonald has given him so many reps in camp that it shouldn’t hurt to have that extra voice in the booth.

I doubt fans will notice anything different against the Titans.

Samuel Garfield: Any major storylines Seahawks fans should be aware of from the other NFC West teams’ preseason? I’ve seen chatter about Ty Simpson balling out but not sure how seriously to take it given that we’ve seen some mid or bad QBs like JJ McCarthy impress in preseason.

It’s either that the media is bored or desperate and they really need to write these stories about Ty Simpson for the views, or they’re actually just that dumb. Sadly, I think it’s more of the latter. We live in an overreaction society, a problem exacerbated by social media.

What I’ve said is that Simpson had the type of performance that you could see by a future perennial Pro Bowler or a career backup. There was nothing there that should make any rational human being with an ounce of football knowledge believe that they saw a glimpse into the future from Simpson’s one preseason start, which included a couple of nice throws downfield, a lot of designed short pitch-and-catch dunks, and some really off-target throws that forced receivers to use all of their catch radius to increase his completion rate.

I’m not criticizing Simpson at all. I’m also not making up things that aren’t there.

And for what it’s worth, which should be a lot, I wouldn’t judge Ty Simpson’s preseason any differently than Jalen Milroe’s. I don’t care what teams they are on. I’m almost glad Milroe didn’t have the stats that Simpson had because hoo boy the lead story every day would be “Should Seahawks TRADE Sam Darnold now and start Jalen Milroe!?”

(No, they shouldn’t. If Simpson was on the Seahawks, I wouldn’t have changed my opinion of him at all based on the first preseason game. It was just a preseason game and the offense was designed to be a home run derby.)

On the 49ers, the news sounds a lot like 2025: Bad defense, lots of injuries.

Strangely that didn’t stop them last year, until they ran into the Seahawks when it really mattered.

Seaside Joe 2725