Seahawks: Patrick Lewis heads list of RFAs and ERFAs

The Seattle Seahawks have six restricted free agents and six more exclusive rights free agents that are all likely to return for next season.

The Seattle Seahawks enter the offseason will a great deal of free agents that either need to be replaced or re-signed. They also don’t have a ton of salary cap space to do so.

Luckily, not all tips into free agency are created equal. The Seahawks are almost guaranteed to get 12 players back if they want them.

Restricted Free Agents

Players with exactly three years of service time enter the offseason as restricted free agents. For them, the offseason comes with a pile of rules that are tough to describe in a coherent way.

First, the team must decide which of 3 levels of contract tenders to offer the player. These are one-year, fully guaranteed contracts. Their value is set by the salary cap.

Depending on the tender offered, the player’s old team is given compensation if the player signs with another team. This can either be a first round pick, a second round pick, or the original round.

That means whatever round the player was drafted in. For undrafted free agents, which most RFAs once were, that means that no compensation is given.

That’s not even the end of it. If a player does agree to terms with a new team, the old team still has the “right of first refusal.” They have to choice to keep the player and simply sign them to exactly the same contract that the other team offered.

As you might guess, very few RFAs ever land with a new team. It has been years since one has moved. Teams prefer to just wait a year until the player will be a UFA.

There are some interesting names here. Lewis, Bailey and Michael are all definitely candidates to get a tendered a contract.

Coleman got great out for playing time by Tukuafu last year, so the idea of guaranteeing him over $1 million is a little tough to swallow. The Seahawks may take a chance at losing him by not tendering him a contract, which will make him an UFA. They can then offer him a non-guaranteed contract closer to the league minimum.

That is almost certainly what they’ll do with Nick Moody as well. There is very little chance that the team would guarantee any part of his contract.

Exclusive Rights Free Agents

Exclusive Rights Free Agents are players with two or fewer years of service time, but no current contract. They cannot negotiate with any team except for the one they played on last season.

ERFA’s have no leverage in contract negotiations whatsoever. They end up playing for the league minimum, or they won’t play at all.

That tends to be just fine with the player though. Most of the time, they were street free agents signed at some point during the middle of the season. They’re just happy to get a chance to make a roster during training camp.

All of them will be back, at least in training camp, unless the team decides they absolutely don’t want them.

The only player here worth watching in terms of possibly not being back is Jesse Williams. He looked like he was close to making the roster in camp last year, but landed on the NFI list because he still was not cancer free.

Hopefully he will be back for 2016. Hopefully that’ll mean that he’s also finally beaten his cancer.

*All salary information taken from Spotrac.