How much has changed in a year for the Seahawks?

With the end of the regular season and the arrival of the offseason for the Seattle Seahawks, all eyes have turned to the future to discuss what to expect when the 2025 season arrives, and how the Hawks will navigate the offseason.

One of the first pieces of business for the Seahawks, as noted on Field Gulls Wednesday, is to address the salary cap and come into compliance for the new league year in mid March. With that in mind, the discussion invariably turned to which players the teams could opt to move on from in the coming weeks, and a variation of a common theme was immediately posted into the comments.

Without reworking any deals (or trades), simply cutting Lockett, DreMont Jones, Noah Fant, Jenkins, and Roy Rob-Harris would clear up nearly $50M in cap space.

There has been no shortage of such proposals regarding how to address the salary cap issues the Hawks face in 2025, and these names are obviously the easiest path to cap compliance, which is why they are so often noted in the comments or on social media. Add in proposals to trade or restructure DK Metcalf or Geno Smith, and the discussion is one that has already been had multiple times.

However, before jumping in to discuss 2025, this is a step back to look at the 2024 offseason and then look at the proposed changes through a different lens and one specific question. So, turning the page back to the 2024 offseason, here is a list of the players whose contracts John Schneider in order to make the cap work in 2024:

• Geno Smith: $9.6M roster bonus converted to signing bonus, pushing $4.8M into 2025
• DK Metcalf: $11.875M of base salary converted to signing bonus, pushing $9.5M into 2025-2028
• Tyler Lockett: $8M signing bonus, pushing $4M into 2025
• Dre’Mont Jones: $9.875M converted to signing bonus, pushing $7.4M into 2025-2027
• Noah Fant: $9M signing bonus, pushing $4.5M into 2025
• Rayshawn Jenkins: $5M signing bonus, pushing $2.5M into 2025

In addition, during the season the Hawks then traded for:

• Roy Robertson-Harris: 2026 6th round pick
• Ernest Jones: 2025 4th round pick

The loss of a pair of Day 3 picks is not entirely irrelevant because Day 3 picks have the opportunity to turn into something, but the reality is most Day 3 picks never amount to anything in the NFL so trading a pair of them for 855 snaps over half a season is not a horrible use of draft capital. Simply for comparison purposes, Rashaad Penny played just 792 snaps for the Seahawks during his five seasons in Seattle after being selected in the first round of the 2018 NFL Draft. Or, more recently 2022 second round pick Dee Eskridge logged 444 offensive and special teams snaps for the Seahawks during his three seasons with the team.

Getting back to the discussion at hand, though, the reality is that the majority of players on the list of those that many fans are ready to release in order to come into cap compliance are the exact same players the team either signed or restructured last year.

That, of course, raises the question about what has changed over the course of the year?

If a player was seen as part of the solution in 2024 to the point that John Schneider was willing to borrow against the future in order to keep that particular puzzle piece on the roster, then have things truly changed so much in the last few months that that player is now a part of the problem? Is a player who was just acquired for draft capital in October already no longer a part of future plans?

Things have certainly changed over the course of the past year, but if almost all of the players signed or restructured by the front office in the spring of 2024 are no longer viewed as part of the solution for 2025, where is the disconnect? Was the 2024 offseason even that much worse upon review? Or is this simply a new era in salary cap management for the Seahawks with former New Orleans Saints cap specialist Joey Laine on staff where cap space is fungible and Seattle is now the Big Easy Northwest?

There are certainly more questions that can be asked, but the reality is that until the team shows the direction it will take in the second season under head coach Mike Macdonald it will all be guesswork because the foundation of expectations that exists was set by the previous regime, and it’s a new era.