Field Gulls
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:
Meanwhile, players taken in the third round or later are able to qualify by playing:
Here is the 2023 Seahawks draft class, whether they qualified, and if they qualified the impact on their 2026 base salary:
