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This weekend marks the last weekend of the 2025 NFL league year, a league year that will forever be the year that Mike Macdonald led the Seattle Seahawks to a 29-13 victory over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX.
In addition, though, the end of one league year marks the start of the next, and that means free agency is right around the corner. On Monday at 12 noon New York time the legal tampering period of free agency begins ahead of the true start of free agency on Wednesday at 4pm New York time.
With that being the case, the Seahawks find themselves in an interesting position, atop the league as defending Super Bowl champion while also possessing the sixth most free cap space according to OverTheCap.com as of writing. That available cap space, combined with Seattle having a large number of pending free agents, has the Seahawks set up to potentially spend significant money, something that they are almost obligated to do under the collective bargaining agreement.
Under Article 12, Section 9(b) of the 2020 collective bargaining agreement, all teams are required to spend at least ninety percent of the salary cap during the 2024 through 2026 league years in cash.
(b) For each of the following multi-League-Year periods 2021–2023 (three
League Years), 2024–2026 (three League Years), and 2027–2030 (four League Years), there
shall be a guaranteed Minimum Team Cash Spending of 90% of the Salary Caps for such
periods.
So, with the salary cap over the 2024-2026 seasons coming in at:
- 2024: $255.4M
- 2025: $279.2M
- 2026: $301.2M
Combining those three numbers, the cap over the three years totaled $835.8M, meaning that in order for teams to comply with the minimum cash spending requirements of the 2020 CBA, each team has to spend a total of $805.68M during the three year period.
With that $805.68M threshold in mind, over the 2024 and 2025 league years the amount of cash the Seahawks spent was below average. This was due in part to the team taking significant dead cap hits in each year for signing bonuses and other prepaid salaries that did not fall into the 2024 or 2025 league years.
For example, when DK Metcalf signed a three year extension in 2022, his $30M signing bonus was prorated over the 2022 through 2025 seasons, meaning it used $15M of cap space during the three year measurement period for cash spending, but contributed absolutely nothing to the minimum cash spending requirement.
Thus, between how much the Seahawks spent in cash in 2024 and 2025 and their minimum cash spend obligation over the 2024 through 2026 league years, they now find themselves in a position where they have one of the highest spending requirements in the league.
Those number are from when OTC was using a cap estimate of $303.5M ahead of the official announcement that the salary cap for 2026 will be $301.2M per team, which means the minimum spend requirement for 2026 is a hair under a couple million high.
Putting all the pieces together, the Seahawks have to spend right around $265M of cash during the 2026 league year. Combining the base salaries, roster bonuses, per game roster bonuses and workout bonuses of every player currently under contract yields about $185M of cash spending, with the draft class slated to take up another $16M or so and the practice squad another $4M, the team will find itself needing to spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $60M to comply with the CBA.
It certainly won’t be difficult for the Seahawks front office to spend that amount in the coming months, but the obligation to pay out that much cash will almost assuredly have a material impact on other decisions the team will need to make in the near future, but that fascinating topic is story to dive into later.