During the 2022 NFL Draft, the Seattle Seahawks added bookend tackles in Charles Cross and Abe Lucas with two of their four picks on the first two days of the draft.
The pair played well as rookies, before a knee issue limited Lucas to just 682 snaps over the next two seasons, with many of those snaps coming in 2024 before the knee had fully recovered from offseason surgery.
Then, during the offseason the team moved to keep Cross around through at least the 2026 season, opting to exercise the fifth-year
option in his rookie contract before reaching agreement with Lucas on a three year contract extension on the eve of the regular season.
Over The Cap now has the details of Lucas’ extension, with the new contract giving him a raise of $9.227M for 2025, while also providing additional future guaranteed money in 2026. The Seahawks, of course, do not give fully guaranteed money in contracts beyond the first year, and Lucas’ extension is no exception. Using their usual structure for effectively fully guaranteed money, the deal includes a $5.596M base salary for 2026 that is guaranteed for injury at signing, with the guarantee vesting into a full guarantee the Friday after the Super Bowl next February.
Noteworthy for the contract is that because Lucas had qualified for the Proven Performance Escalator based on playing time through his first three seasons, his base salary for 2025 was scheduled to be $3.263M, of which none was guaranteed. Under the extension, his base salary was decreased to a fully guaranteed $1.28M, with the remainder of the fully guaranteed money in the deal coming in the form of an $11.21M signing bonus.
The full breakdown of the cap hits by season are as follows:
- 2025: $4.358M ($1.28M base salary + $275k signing bonus proration from rookie contract + $2.803M signing bonus proration)
- 2026: $9.149M ($5.596M base salary + $2.803M signing bonus proration + $1.02M per game active roster bonuses)
- 2027: $16.803M ($12.98M base salary + $2.803M signing bonus proration + $1.02M per game active roster bonuses)
- 2028: $18.803M ($14.98M base salary + $2.803M signing bonus proration + $1.02M per game active roster bonuses)
Given the recent explosion of salaries on their second contracts across the NFL, this extension could prove to be one of the greatest values in the entire league, if Lucas can stay healthy. That, of course, will unquestionably be the determining factor in how much value the team gets out of this contract, with the market for right tackles likely to surpass $30M per year in the next season or two.
Now, of course, the big question is how the two sides arrived at the three year value in the ballpark of $46M, and one way to land in that ballpark is to base the value of the contract on the percentage of snaps Lucas has played in his career.
Between when he was selected in the third round of the 2022 NFL Draft and the signing of the extension, Lucas’ snap counts played and the total Seahawks offensive snap counts by season are as follows:
- 2022: 978 of 1093 offensive snaps played (89.48%)
- 2022 Postseason: 68 of 68 offensive snaps played (100.00%)
- 2023: 273 of 1051 offensive snaps played (25.98%)
- 2024: 409 of 1100 offensive snaps played (37.18%)
- Cumulative: 1660 of 3,244 offensive snaps played (52.17%)
Now, the top of the right tackle market is currently the $28.125M per year on the contract of Tristan Wirfs, so if one takes the $28.125M times 0.5117 it yields $14.67M. Multiplying that number by three gives a value right in the neighborhood of $44M, which isn’t exactly the number sought, but it’s close enough for a ballpark approximation to state that the contract is a reasonable market rate approximation for Lucas, adjusted for the time he has missed to this point in his career.
Of course, the hope is that he doesn’t miss significant time going forward, giving the Seahawks the potential to yield a possibly spectacular return from this contract.
