The Seattle Seahawks are in the postseason and set to face off against the division rival San Francisco 49ers in primetime on Saturday for the second time in January.
The first time the two teams met up, the winner got the NFC West title and top seed in the NFC while the loser would go on the road as a Wild Card team. This time around it’s do or die, as the loser goes to Cabo to watch the winner play in the NFC Championship Game.
Regardless of which team comes out ahead in the matchup, with the details
of the Charles Cross extension now public, the salary cap situation for the Seahawks in 2026 is starting to come clear.
The starting point for this overview is the $76.6M of available cap space shown for the team on OverTheCap.com, a number that includes the roughly $15M of 2025 cap space the Seahawks rolled over from the 2025 season.
As always, the first order of business when evaluating cap space for next season early in the offseason is to fill out the roster. The reason for this is that the Seahawks currently only have 42 players under contract for the 2026 season, and a full roster is, of course, 53 players and 16 members of the practice squad.
Thus, the rookie minimum salary under the 2020 CBA for the NFL in 2026 is $885,000, meaning that even if the Seahawks trade away all their draft picks, don’t sign any free agents or extend their players on expiring contracts and only signed undrafted free agents with no signing bonus to the roster, it will cost the team $9.735M of cap space to get the roster to 53 players. Deducting that $9.735M from the $76.6 leaves the team at $67.225M of available space.
Next up is taking care of the offseason housekeeping when it comes to automatic contract adjustments, specifically determining if any members of the 2023 rookie class qualified for the Proven Performance Escalator under the CBA. Under the PPE, a player can earn an automatic raise by making the Pro Bowl or exceeding minimum playing time thresholds.
The playing time thresholds vary by the round in which a player was selected. Second round draft picks need to play either:
- 60% of cumulative offensive or defensive snaps during the first three years of their rookie contract
- 60% of offensive or defensive snaps in two of the first three seasons of their rookie contract.
Meanwhile, players taken in the third round or later are able to qualify by playing:
- 35% of cumulative offensive or defensive snaps during the first three years of their rookie contract or
- 35% of offensive or defensive snaps in two of the first three seasons of their rookie contract.
Here is the 2023 Seahawks draft class, whether they qualified, and if they qualified the impact on their 2026 base salary:
- 2.37: Derick Hall, No
- 2.52: Zach Charbonnet, No
- 4.108: Anthony Bradford, Yes, 2026 base salary $1.145M -> $3.453M
- 4.123: Cameron Young, No
- 5.151: Mike Morris, No
- 5.154: Olusegun Oluwatimi, No
- 6.198: Jerrick Reed, No
- 7.237: Kenny McIntosh, No
That’s a raise of $2.308M for Bradford in 2026 and means a corresponding reduction in available cap space to close to $65M, and since this is a very high level overview, $65M is close enough for everyone but the bean counters in the room.
The next step is to address the restricted free agents. The team can give each RFA a contract tender, or non-tender the player allowing them to become an unrestricted free agent. There are three tenders:
- Right of first refusal: $3.453M
- Second round tender: $5.658M
- First round tender: $7.893M
Seahawks Restricted Free Agents
- Cody White
- Brandon Pili
- Brady Russell
- Drake Thomas
- Jake Bobo
- Chris Stoll
- A.J. Finley
Of those, Russell, Thomas and Stoll seem the most likely candidates to have a ROFR tender extended to them, with the remaining players likely non-tendered and allowed to explore free agency.
Before anyone freaks out about using a ROFR tender on a long snapper or pure special teams player, one thing should be noted. It should come as absolutely no surprise if the team uses the tender, or perhaps more accurately the leverage provided by the fact that RFA tenders carry zero guaranteed money, to reach an agreement with Stoll and/or Russell on two or three year extensions. Both Stoll and Russell have provided high level special teams play over the past three seasons, and both seem likely candidate for modest extensions in the offseason. With that the case, the ROFR tender will be used as a placeholder for them, while there seems zero doubt that the team will be happy to spend the $3.453M to keep Thomas lined up next to Ernest Jones at linebacker in 2026.
Thus, deducting the net cost of these three tenders ($3.453M – $885k each) requires an additional $7.704M of cap space from the Seahawks, and brings the total available amount down to $57.3M.
From there the next step is to account for the amount of cap space necessary for the team to sign its draft picks. This is rather simple this offseason since the Seahawks only hold four draft picks as of this moment, with the cost to sign those four picks $6.739M of 2026 cap space. That number is assuming that Seattle winds up with the last pick in the first round, so it would increase should the team stumble on its way to hoisting a Lombardi, which would, of course, mean a corresponding decrease in cap space.
However, of the $6.739M, only the net impact of adding four players at that cap cost matters, meaning deducting four of the $885k minimum salaries used to fill out the roster earlier in the analysis. Thus, the net impact of signing the draft class as things currently stand will be roughly $3.2M.
This brings the available cap down to just above $54M, and rounding down to $54M is fine because the very minor net expenses of signing the two restricted free agents, Ty Okada and George Holani, land the team close enough to $54M for today’s purposes.
Before taking to free agency and blowing that full $54M, though, the Seahawks will need to keep small amounts set aside for the practice squad and an injury replacement pool. Those amounts won’t be needed during the offseason, so they can be created during the summer or in season as needed, but they are cap expenses the team will incur.
For the practice squad, in 2026 each practice squad player will make $13,750 per week, or $247,500 for the full season. For a full complement of 16 players on the practice squad, that works out to $3.96M, with an additional $500k or so needed for gameday elevations, putting the full cost of the practice squad at roughly $4.5M.
That leaves Seattle with a hair under $50M of cap space before setting aside an injury replacement pool for 2026, meaning that the team realistically has somewhere in the ballpark of $45M, give or take a couple of million either direction, to play with during the offseason.
Rehashing all of the above in a table format with all the numbers in one place looks like this:
- Starting point: $76.6M
- Fill out roster: ($9.735M)
- PPE for Bradford: ($2.308M)
- RFAs: ($7.704M)
- Draft Picks: ($3.2M)
- Practice Squad: ($4.5M)
- Injury Replacements: ($3M-$5M)
- Available 2026 Cap Space: $44M-$46M
But before getting to the offseason, it’s on to the divisional round of the playoffs for the first time since prior to the pandemic.
