The Seattle Seahawks are just weeks away from free agency, and that should be both exciting and scary for 12s. Keeping the team together as much as possible would be key to 2026 success, obviously, as the team in 2025 won the Super Bowl. Why stop at only one?
According to Over the Cap, Seattle has $61,879,461 in cap room. That is a top-10 amount, but the cash could go quickly as well. Just like next offseason, the team has many important players whose rookie contracts have just ended. They will need to be paid.
Most of them have been exceedingly productive, too, but only two are among the four that follow. One that isn't is cornerback Riq Woolen, who has been too mercurial over the past three seasons to risk spending much money on. At least, nowhere near the $15 million a season he may command on the open free agent market.
Four Seattle Seahawks the team needs to bring back in free agency
Other players who need to be brought back weren't drafted by Seattle. They aren't going to be cheap, either, though. In other words, while the Seahawks have a lot of cap room, relatively speaking, it might not be enough to bring back everyone the team wants to.
Running back Kenneth Walker
The most seemingly obvious keeper is Walker. He was the Super Bowl MVP, sure, but his true value isn't that, of course. 2025 was his best season for many reasons (including having 1,309 total yards), and as long as he can stay healthy, Walker could turn out to be a top-5 running back in franchise history.
He has loads of speed and surprising power. Walker also seemed to squelch his need to hesitate before going full-bore into the line of scrimmage in 2025. Whether this was a coaching issue or simply the maturity of the player, it worked.
Kenneth Walker also played in every game for Seattle this season, something that shouldn't be easily dismissed. One of the knocks against him was that he couldn't stay healthy, and he disproved that theory this year. He won't get franchise tagged, though, so hopefully he will accept a multi-year deal at something close to $10 million a season.
Cornerback Josh Jobe
Jobe is a true John Schneider special. The general manager is brilliant at finding diamonds in the rough, from the fifth-round draft picks like Richard Sherman and Riq Woolen, to signing underrated free agents.
The cornerback is a great example of the latter. He played for the Philadelphia Eagles in the first two seasons of his career, but had only three starts. He likely wasn't ever expected to start for the Seahawks, either, but he earned the right to be given a chance in 2024 and showed he could provide sticky man-to-man coverage.
IN 2025, he started 15 games, had a quarterback rating allowed of a very good 77.0 while allowing just 49.5 percent of his targets to be completed. The fear is that some team will offer him the kind of money ($11 million a season) former Seattle corner D.J. Reed received from the New York Jets in 2022. Seattle wouldn't match that for Jobe.
Edge rusher Boye Mafe
Hopefully, other teams notice Mafe's sack total in 2025 (2) and think he would be a waste to try to sign, but that probably isn't the case. NFL teams are smart enough to know that Mafe is far more valuable than the number of sacks he had this season. In fact, according to ESPN, the edge rusher was eighth in pass-rush win-rate in the league.
One reason Mafe produced less was that he played less. Thankfully, the Seahawks had a foursome of edge rushers that could rotate in and out among themselves without diminishing in terms of disrupting the opposing quarterback. This is one reason Seattle was able to maintain a good pass rush all year: The players stayed relatively fresh.
Mafe has had nine sacks in a season before, and can likely get back to that number, but he is fantastic against the run as well. Some team might pay him $15 million a season or more. Let's hope that is Seattle.
Wide receiver Rashid Shaheed
Shaheed has only spent a half-season with the Seattle Seahawks, but instantly made an impact. That may have been less so as a wide receiver and more as a kick and punt returner, but therein lies his real value. Shaheed isn't just one thing; he does many things well. He is sure-handed as a wideout, can run a decent route tree, and take the top off of the defense.
But what he does on special teams is, well...special. He returned two kickoffs for touchdowns, including one that started the Divisional Round game against the San Francisco 49ers, and one punt for a TD. That one was even more valuable as it changed the tenor of Seattle's Week 16 game against the Los Angeles Rams when the team was trailing 30-14 in the second half.
Is $15 million a season what Shaheed is worth? The market might say it's even higher. Whatever it takes, the Seahawks need him back.