The Seattle Seahawks will walk into the new 2026-27 NFL season as a favorite to repeat as Super Bowl champions, NFC champions, and NFC West division champions, but they aren't alone, and at least two expected NFC contenders are right in their own division.
A lot of free agency and trade activity happened with the Seahawks and their division rivals, the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams. The Rams and 49ers got better with their acquisitions and returning players who missed large portions of last season. The Seahawks, however, lost a few key players and, at least at running back, haven't yet replaced them.
The Seahawks were never going to be able to keep everyone who entered this offseason as a free agent. Very few teams, if any, bring back everyone after winning a Super Bowl. Seattle was no exception, but that didn't seem to faze John Schneider, who's been calling the shots in the Seahawks front office for 16 years.
Seattle Seahawks GM John Schneider didn't like losing free agents, but understands that business is business
Boye Mafe (LB), Riq Woolen (CB), Coby Bryant (S), Dareke Young (WR), and, of course, Kenneth Walker III (RB), the reigning Super Bowl MVP; these are the players that Seattle lost in free agency. Five players are a lot, especially when each one had a significant impact on the Seahawks season, which ended up in a title, save for Young, who didn't see much playing time.
Walker was the loss that hurt the most, but it was between him and Rashid Shaheed, and Schneider made his decision. It's never easy for a team or its management to see Super Bowl-winning players go, but Schneider saw it coming and didn't let it stop him from continuing business as usual.
Thanks to Schneider's excellent roster construction over the past few years, though, the Seahawks are still very much in a good place.
Now that the brunt of free agency is over, Schneider has the guys on his team to pay attention to, and whoever he might still sign as a free agent or pick up in the draft. During Schneider's media session regarding Jaxon Smith-Njigba's extension, Schneider spoke about his expectations going into free agency and what it looked like for his team.
"We have talked about it before, obviously, we want to keep as many guys as we possibly can," Schneider said during Smith-Njigba's contract extension press conference,per Seahawks.com's John Boyle. "However you look at it, fortunately or unfortunately, [roster turnover] is just part of the business, it's part of the job that we've all jumped into, and we're going to miss the guys that have left. And we're going to dive in even more into the guys that are still on our team. And we had planned for this. Joey Laine and our group upstairs, as you approach free agency, free agency meetings, what that looks like, getting through the combine, speaking to everybody down there, seeing what the landscape's going to look like."
The guys who are still a part of the Seahawks all did their part in bringing a Super Bowl to Seattle, and that is who Schneider and head coach Mike Macdonald have to run with. Again, Schneider has done a remarkable job with the Seahawks' roster construction over the last few years, which is why, despite the free agent losses, the Seahawks remain strong contenders going into next season.
Their defense will still be suffocating, and their offense will remain one of the league's biggest threats.
So while the Seahawks lost some good players, they still have one of the NFL's top teams.
Schneider has played this free agency as well as he could, and the credit should go to him for building such a good team over the years, because the Seahawks might be one of the few teams that can sustain the type of losses they took in the last few weeks and roll on.