The Seattle Seahawks didn't do much before the 2026 NFL trade deadline. The only player added was a couple of weeks before the deadline, when Seattle gave the Indianapolis Colts two picks for Quenton Nelson.
Maybe Seattle's offer to other teams simply wasn't enough to get a player the team wanted. Or maybe general manager John Schneider simply didn't want to remake the roster much.
While the San Francisco 49ers tried to make moves to have a playoff push, Seattle was content with keeping most of its draft picks for 2027. That was likely the smarter approach.
Winners and losers for the Seattle Seahawks at the 2026 trade deadline
Winner: General manager John Schneider
Schneider is the only GM in NFL history to win two Super Bowls with two completely different rosters and coaching staffs. He knows what he is doing.
His move to acquire left guard Quenton Nelson needs to be followed by signing him to an extension, but Schneider not doing anything else before the deadline was wise. The team is 5-4 and potentially set to miss the playoffs. Why give up valuable draft capital when it might take more than one player to greatly improve the team?
Instead, with the projected comp picks, Schneider could have as many as 10 picks in the 2027 draft. Better to have those than to acquire a veteran player who might not stick around long.
Winner: Edge rusher Dante Fowler Jr.
Without Uchenna Nwosu over the last couple of weeks, Derick Hall and DeMarcus Lawrence have had to play more snaps. Fowler has only had one good game this season (which came last week against the Arizona Cardinals), and there is no guarantee he will have another.
The Seahawks have obviously seen enough from him that they didn't feel the need to overpay for another player at his position. The veteran will be counted on to continue to be solid from Week 9 onward. The risk is real, though. Seattle's defense needs more production from the edge rush group than Hall and Lawrence.
Winner: Running back Zach Charbonnet
Not that the Seahawks said they were hoping to add a player like the Indianapolis Colts' Jonathan Taylor, but Seattle was definitely linked to him via rumor. The positive part for Seattle was that Zach Charbonnet and Jadarian Price looked like a god tandem in Week 9 and should be the way forward.
But the Seahawks not adding another running back, and potentially making Charbonnet part of any trade, might mean that the team hopes to re-sign Charbonnet in the offseason when he is a free agent. That could keep him and Price as a team for the foreseeable future. That makes no trade happening make a lot of sense.
Loser: Quarterback Fernando Mendoza
Not a Seahawks player, of course, but he is connected to Seattle because the Las Vegas Raiders traded Kirk Cousins to the Minnesota Vikings. It is clearly the Mendoza era in Vegas now.
Making his first start against a defense as good as Seattle's should be no fun, but one can be sure that head coach Klint Kubiak will have a solid game plan in place. The Raiders might hope to get an ugly win while Mendoza isn't asked to do too much.
Loser: The Seattle Seahawks defense
As much as Seattle will face a rookie in his first game in Week 10, and as good as the unit is overall, the Seahawks could still have used another edge rusher or cornerback. The depth is so much thinner this season than last, and that certainly showed up against the Chicago Bears in Week 8.
The team might not have had to give up too much for Khalil Mack, though that isn't clear. Mack wasn't traded, so maybe the Los Angeles Chargers just wanted too much. Or a cornerback might have helped if Josh Jobe or Nehemiah Pritchett were to get hurt in the future.
12s and the team just have to keep their fingers crossed that no one else gets hurt. Otherwise, Seattle could be sunk.
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