Field Gulls
When free agency opened in March, Seahawks Seahawks general manager John Schneider went on an uncharacteristic spending spree on outside free agents, a change in strategy compared to the past decade.
And that change has paid off well for the team.
Specifically, for more than a decade under the direction of Pete Carroll, Schneider and the Seahawks had stayed away from spending big money on multi-year contracts for outside free agents. Multi-year deals had been saved for their own free agents, with players signed from other teams traditionally joining the Seahawks on one-year contracts.
However, in 2025 the Seahawks signed fewer free agents to contracts for a single season and a salary of greater than $2M than they had in any year since 2016.
There’s really no need to rehash exactly how bad the 2024 outside free agent class wound up performing for Seattle, and as such a simple list of the players added should suffice for most:
Of the players on that list, the one who made the biggest impact was Jerome Baker, though that contribution comes from his inclusion in the traded that brought Ernest Jones from the Tennessee Titans, rather than for any of his on-field performances for the Seahawks.
On the flip side, as noted here on Field Gulls in April, the number of outside free agents signed to contracts of three years in length or greater over the past ten offseasons is as follows:
Long story short, over the prior decade the Seahawks signed four outside free agents to contracts of three years or more, before signing signing three outside free agents to such contracts during the 2025 offseason alone.
The results have been telling.
Digging right to the heart of the matter, the reality of the situation is that players who sign one-year contracts in free agency do so for a reason. Perhaps it is because they aren’t talented enough, aren’t healthy enough or aren’t young enough, there is some reason why they would sign a one-year contract rather than a lucrative long-term deal.
In contrast, players who are able to command multi-year contracts tend to be those players who happen to be better at what it is that they do, to the point that there are multiple teams willing to give them contracts. This provides them with the leverage to sign for an amount that makes the salary cap worrywarts fret, but in an age of a rapidly growing cap and .
With that in mind, the three outside free agents the Seahawks added to...
