Photo by Alika Jenner/Getty Images
The Seahawks have changed the way they approach free agency this offseason, which is interesting because organizations don’t make major operational changes when everything is running smooth.
It was in December 2021 that Mike Garafolo of the NFL Network reported that Jody Allen was not happy with the performance of the
Seattle Seahawks that season and
did not look at the struggles as a one year issue. There has been no shortage of change in the three plus years since.
Just months later Allen was visible in the Seattle war room as the Seahawks made their selections in the
2022 NFL Draft, and following nearly a decade of subpar results, the 2022 draft class proved to be one of the best groups of players added through the draft in nearly a decade. Those results were followed with solid classes in both 2023 and 2024, giving the team a young core around which to build.
However, building around that young core has proven a more challenging task, with the team typically staying away from making significant additions through free agency. Specifically, the front office has tended to build out portions of the roster with veterans on one-year contracts.
None of the one-year contracts themselves are overly prohibitive, but over the course of the past decade the Seahawks have used more than $100M of cap space on players on one-year deals, with the overwhelming majority of players moving on upon expiration of that one-year deal. Over the past decade the only two free agents who joined Seattle on a one-year contract in free agency and then stayed with the Seahawks on a multi-year deal were Bradley McDougald and Geno Smith, both of whom happened to be traded away two years into their three year contract.
With that in mind, here is a look at how many one-year contracts Seattle has signed with free agents that paid $2M or more for that season of work by league year over the past decade.
And for those who prefer to see things laid out in a chart, here is the exact same data in chart form.
Obviously, outside of 2016 when the Seahawks signed a bunch of effectively minimum salary one-year deals with the likes of Brandon Browner, Chris Clemons, Sealver Siliga and Bradley Sowell, as well as a two year contract with J’Marcus Webb, to date 2025 has seen the fewest one-year, $2M+ contracts handed out by the team.
The question, of course, is whether this is simply the result of it still being early in the offseason, or if it represents a change in course for Seattle after the disastrous 2024 free agency class, a group which is set to have zero members on the 2025 roster.
Seahawks 2024 free agent additions:
George Fant: 2yrs, up to $14M
Rayshawn Jenkins: 2yrs, $12M
Jerome Baker: 1yr, $7M
Tyrel Dodson: 1yr, up to $5.51M
Laken Tomlinson:1 yr, up to $4M
Pharaoh Brown: 1yr, up to $3.9M
Nick Harris: 1yr, up to $3.26M
Johnathan Hankins: 1yr, $1.96M
— John P Gilbert (@JohnPGilbertNFL)
November 8, 2024
Returning to the key question, have the Seahawks changed their free agency habits? Based on the one-year contracts given out so far, it’s impossible to say either way, but there could be some evidence that they have, given that they haven’t gone overboard signing veterans to multimillion dollar contracts.
However, changing perspectives tells a different story.
“But it’s only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve.” -Professor Barnhardt in
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Having looked at how the Seahawks have handled one-year contracts, the next logical step is to look at the multi-year contracts that have handed out in free agency. Thus, here is a look at the number of contracts that are three or more years in length the Seattle front office has given to outside free agents over the past decade by year, first in table format.
And for those who prefer the visual.
There’s no questioning that change. The front office has signed as many outside free agents to contracts that run for three or more years in the past month as they handed out in the nine prior offseasons combined.
That’s a change, and people and organizations don’t just change for the sake of changing. They change when things aren’t going the way they want them to, which means the previous strategy wasn’t working, and if something wasn’t working it means it was not successful enough to meet the standards of the organization.
So, fans and observers can debate all day whether or not John Schneider is on the hot seat, but at the end of the day this is a material change operations for the team, and change isn’t implemented when everything is going according to plan.
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