Because the offseason slowly strikes ahead, the makeover of the Seattle Seahawks continues because the group retools the roster for rookie head coach Mike Macdonald. As that takes place, some followers have posited that the group ought to make strikes on the receiver place with a purpose to benefit from an abundance of riches on the place to commerce for extra draft capital. There was no scarcity of requires the Hawks to commerce DK Metcalf, and even some followers clamoring for the group to maneuver on from veteran wideout Tyler Lockett. That is very true in gentle of the commerce of the Buffalo Payments commerce of Stefon Diggs to the Houston Texans earlier Wednesday and the commerce of Jerry Jeudy from the Denver Broncos to the Cleveland Browns earlier this offseason.
On Monday, former Subject Gulls Managing Editor Kenneth Arthur authored an incredible breakdown of why it’s unlikely the Hawks would deal Metcalf, and now it’s time to put out why any expectation of buying and selling Tyler Lockett ought to be put to mattress.
The rationale why the Seahawks gained’t be buying and selling Lockett anytime quickly has nothing to do along with his on subject efficiency, his age or his lower in manufacturing in 2023, and comes right down to the easy indisputable fact that it’s unimaginable to commerce him at the moment. Which will appear considerably ridiculous as a result of it trying from the skin it might seem that any group could make any transfer they need by shuffling issues round, and that’s certainly true. Nonetheless, with none shuffling, Seattle can’t commerce Lockett.
This all comes again to the reworked contract Lockett agreed to again in early March forward of free company. Underneath the brand new contract, the breakdown of Lockett’s cap hits the following two seasons is as follows:
Cap Hit: $18.895M – $4.66M base wage + $13.895M signing bonus proration + $340k per sport roster bonuses
Cap Hit: $30.895M – $10M base wage + $13.895M signing bonus proration + $5.3M roster bonus + $1.7M per sport roster bonuses
Within the occasion of a commerce of Lockett forward of June 1, the Seahawks can be compelled to acknowledge the $13.895M signing bonus proration from every of 2024 and 2025 throughout the 2024 season, leading to a useless cap hit of $27.79M. One needn’t be a rocket scientist to do the maths and determine that $27.79M is $8.895M larger than the present cap hit of $18.895M Lockett is slated to hold throughout the 2024 season. This cover hit improve means, after all, that buying and selling Lockett would require the Hawks to have $8.895M of accessible cap area.
Merely put, the Seahawks don’t have $8.895M of cap area. Based on the NFLPA public wage cap report Seattle is presently has $2,740,351 in cap area after accounting for 64 contracted gamers. Based on OverTheCap.com the Seahawks have 65 gamers underneath contract, however that’s with out together with the lately added Laviska Shenault, which places Seattle at 66 gamers. The 2 gamers the NFLPA report doesn’t embrace are nearly assuredly Shenault and Okay’Von Wallace, and taking the roughly $800k of cap area these two contracts would require as soon as included drops the Seahawks to someplace of round $1.9M of 2024 cap area.
So, what occurs when a group submits a commerce to the league workplace, however doesn’t have the mandatory cap area to finish the transaction? The league workplace merely denies the commerce and doesn’t course of it.
Now, earlier than somebody will get all up in a huff and argues that the Seahawks can simply create the area that they want by restructuring the contracts of Geno Smith, DK Metcalf, Dre’Mont Jones or another mixture, that’s completely true. Nonetheless, the group would want to course of these restructures first, and restructured contracts don’t create cap area instantaneously. Restructures require the league workplace to course of the reworked contract, thus it requires at some point to go for a group to create area.
So, sure, the Seahawks may commerce Lockett in the event that they first create the cap area essential to accommodate his useless cap hit, however till the transfer or strikes which truly release $7M or so of cap area occur, it’s not value worrying about. It’s true that the group may wait till after June 1, however ready till then wouldn’t add any draft capital within the 2024 draft, which appears the motivation for a lot of who’ve proposed the concept.
That means, when all of the items of the puzzle come collectively followers ought to in all probability neglect in regards to the concept of buying and selling Lockett in the interim.
