What Seattle Seahawks GM John Schneider said about the salary cap situation

NFL teams are nearing the portion of the offseason where some will have to make difficult personnel decisions to try and balance out their cap situation. The Seattle Seahawks, who need to clear space, are among that group of franchises.

Luckily for Seattle, the 2025 NFL salary cap is projected to be about $5 million higher than OverTheCap's projection of $272.5 million. That should help at least slightly alleviate the Seahawks' situation, and general manager John Schneider said their current plan remains sound.

“Yeah, we’ll take anything we can get, right?” Schneider said on The John Schneider Show with Seattle Sports 710AM. “We were about $2 million under, which is good for us. So we budget off of that and kind of do our planning off of that.”

Potential cap casualties continue to swirl, including veterans Tyler Lockett, Dre'Mont Jones, Uchenna Nwosu and Noah Fant all being possible departures. Seattle is working with Lockett to find answers to keeping him around, but those conversations are yet to surface in regard to Jones, Nwosu and Fant.

Seattle Seahawks Wide Receiver Tyler Lockett (16) runs down the field baseline. — Jan 5, 2025; Inglewood, California, USA; Seattle Seahawks Wide Receiver Tyler Lockett (16) runs down the field baseline at SoFi Stadium for the Seattle Seahawks at Los Angeles Rams Week 18 matchup. | William Navarro-Imagn Images

Before the new projection, the Seahawks were projected to be more than $11 million in the red. Now, the team's deficit is expected to be about $6.5 million. Schneider said the team will begin making decisions about personnel at the NFL Scouting Combine, which begins Thursday.

“We usually find that out at the combine,” Schneider added. “We’ll find out exactly like, OK, what are other free agents looking at? Like, OK, player X wants to make $8 million, and then we find out, well, actually he’s going to make $4 million. By the end of the weekend … the agent may come back to us and be like, ‘Hey, this guy’s not gonna have the market that we thought.’ And then you can say, OK, well then maybe there won’t be another cap casualty."

After finishing as the only double-digit-win team to not make the playoffs, the Seahawks likely want to keep their nucleus from this season together for another run in 2025. If they can do that while building through the draft and free agency, the team will be in a good place.

The salary cap isn't set, but indicators are pointing in Seattle's favor heading into March.

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