Seahawks: A quick look at the current salary cap situation

The Seahawks Seahawks have only 50 of 90 roster spots filled, and don’t have much cap space remaining.

The Seahawks currently have 50 players under contract. They’ll be adding 40 more names to that before training camp opens. 20-25 of those will be draft picks and UDFAs.

During the offseason, only the top 51 contracts count toward the salary cap. So the next player they sign will count fully on the salary cap. After that, their cap spending only goes up if the player they signs makes more than the 51st largest contract.

Right now, the NFL’s salary cap for 2016 is expected to about $153 million. We won’t have the exact number until the end of February. It will likely be released at the NFL Combine or just after.

The number could end up anywhere from $150 million to $156 million, but planning around the middle of that range makes sense for now.

That means that the Seahawks currently have $23 million in cap space to work with.

The 50 players currently under contract, plus the dead money from players released in 2015, adds up to $130,747,808. The Seahawks will also roll over $893,139 in unused salary cap space from the 2015 season.

That means that the Seahawks currently have approximately $23 million in cap space to work with. While that sounds like a lot, really isn’t once you consider all the players that must be re-signed or replaced.

Of course, Kam Chancellor and Michael Bennett both want a piece of that pie as well. Both are signed for another couple of seasons still, but they believe they should be paid more. As we saw with Chancellor this year, that isn’t an insignificant problem.

Seattle will add to their cap number when Marshawn Lynch either retires or is cut. Removing him from he roster will generate another $6.5 million cap space.

That puts Seattle at $29.5 million in cap space. Which is a workable number. They won’t need to do anything drastic like trying to trade Chancellor or Jimmy Graham, though they could do so if they decide they don’t want to pay them.

Outside of that, the Seahawks don’t have many other ways to generate cap space.  They have very few players they could release or restructure that’ll generate significant cap space.

So don’t expect any blockbuster moves from Seattle this offseason. They won’t be  adding another Jimmy Graham- or Percy Harvin-type contract. They simply don’t have the cap space to do so this year.