4 underpaid Seattle Seahawks heading into 2023 offseason

Player No. 2: Seahawks right tackle Abe Lucas

I am cheating a bit with these next two choices but only mildly. The point of this article isn’t supposed to be how much the Seahawks are purposefully underpaying players but more how the players are relatively underpaid paid on their success as it relates to their fellow players. Eventually, all the players on this list will likely be paid more but how much more remains to be seen.

That said, Abraham Lucas should have been drafted higher than he was in the 2022 NFL draft. Prior to the draft, Lucas was projected to go anywhere from the first round to the fourth and the Seahawks were lucky enough to have Lucas fall to them in the third round. Mostly, the issue was that Lucas is a pure right tackle and most teams place a higher priority on left tackles because that is the blindside of right-handed quarterbacks.

Lucas was excellent in his rookie year for Seattle. He out-graded fellow rookie (and 9th overall pick) Charles Cross. Cross, the left tackle, wasn’t bad either but Lucas was simply more consistent and seemed a bit more NFL-ready.

Lucas won’t have a cap number higher than $1,715,534 through 2026. After that, assuming Lucas continues to improve with more NFL experience while staying healthy, Lucas is going to get paid a ton of money. Lucas’s cap hit of $1,225,381 is the 23rd-highest entering 2023. The nine highest-paid right tackles all have cap hits of $9,384,306 or higher and the argument could be made that Lucas is already a top-nine right tackle in the NFL.