The Seattle Seahawks Have $24 Million To Spend

With baseball practices getting underway and playoff pushes starting to get serious in the NBA and NHL, it’s easy to forget that we’re on the verge of the true beginning of the NFL offseason. We’re past the phase of coach hirings and firings, and now teams are getting ready to start re-shaping their rosters. This is when the fun really begins.

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The NFL is a league where spending is tricky. There’s a salary cap designed to ensure as much, after all. The cap number changes every year, and we now know what that number is for 2015: $143.28 million.

Seems like a lot! Perfectly reasonable first reaction, except that this is really just keeping with inflation and doesn’t mean that the ‘Hawks have a sudden influx of extra space to play with. Seattle will roll over about $4 million, a fairly significant amount, bringing their total cap to about $147.7 million. Yeah, that’s a lot.

Subtract Seattle’s existing commitments and that leaves them with about $24 million in space before hitting the cap. It’s alright if you want to start daydreaming about the kind of team the ‘Hawks would be with $24 million worth of upper echelon free agent talent. But just remind yourself that it’s just a daydream, because the Seahawks are quite likely to spend a big chunk of that money on guys we already know and love.

Russell Wilson, for one. Bobby Wagner, for another. Even with Byron Maxwell seemingly destined to find a new home in free agency, extensions for Wilson and Wagner are going to eat up a lot of Seattle’s newfound breathing room. Wilson made $1.5 million in 2014. What do you think he’s getting paid next season? That amount, plus $20 million? Already it’s clear why signing a Ndamukong Suh would be so unlikely. This team’s got to find a way to keep as much of the core intact as possible.

With Wilson and Wagner in line for big extensions, there’s not really that much room for Seattle to play at the top of free agency. This is why it’s so important that John Schneider is an excellent GM: he’s shown an ability to find value in underrated – and underpriced – players, and he’ll need to do that again. Without the ability to sign big names, the ‘Hawks are going to have to find diamonds in the rough.

The draft is also going to be huge for the Seahawks, as the team’s ability to field above-average players on rookie contracts will go a long way as the existing stars get more expensive. Not like this is going to clear up next year, either – the cap will go up, Seattle will need to pay to keep more of their core guys. And every year for the forseeable future, presumably. This isn’t a one-year thing, though perhaps it’s more extreme than it will be given the whole QBs-get-paid-a-lot thing.

Seattle has money to spend. We already know how they’re going to spend most of it, which is just the reality of their situation. There are still ways to make room – guys could be cut – but for now, it’s unlikely the Seahawks make a lot of loud moves to bring in guys from outside the organizaiton. Wait and see, of course, but it looks like this $24 million is mostly spent.