Here comes the cost of winning the Super Bowl.
In the next week, the Seahawks could be losing two of the biggest reasons they won it all last month.
Rashid Shaheed and the team that traded for the game-breaking kick returner in November are far apart on talks for a new contract. That has Shaheed, 27, seemingly headed to free agency when the NFL negotiating period begins Monday.
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ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that about the Pro Bowl returner plus wide receiver Wednesday afternoon.
“Shaheed is said to not be close to an extension with the Seahawks,” Schefter wrote, citing sources.”
The free-agent market officially opens March 11. The league’s so-called “legal tampering” period of unrestricted free agents talking directly to other teams begins Monday.
The Seahawks have six, key, pending free agents. All are likely to command multiple bidders if Seattle can’t strike a deal before they get to the open market.
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Though the Seahawks decision-makers say they want to, Super Bowl champions can’t keep everyone. The league legislates against it. It has a hard salary cap, weighted scheduling of best teams playing best teams the following season plus drafting in reverse order of the previous season’s results.
“It’s gonna be a challenge. Yeah, it’s gonna be. It’s gonna be a challenge to figure this year’s puzzle out,” general manager John Schneider said last week at the league’s scouting combine in Indianapolis.
“I mean, these guys are — it’s a really cool team, and they’re all special. They’re all special people. “So gonna try to retain as many of those guys as we possibly can. As long as we can keep that collective 70 (players, 53 on the active roster plus 17 on the practice squad) together, where it is fitting in.”
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Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Rashid Shaheed (22) speaks to the media during Seahawks team availability , at San Jose Convention Center on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026, in San Jose, Calif.
(Brian Hayes/bhayes@thenewstribune.com)Rashid Shaheed, Kenneth Walker gone?
Shaheed joins Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker in appearing to be on their ways out of Seattle and into free agency.
The Seahawks did not use the sure way to keep Walker: a franchise tag for 2026. The league’s deadline to apply a franchise tag on a player passed Tuesday without the Seahawks using it — as usual.
Schneider has used the franchise tag just twice in 17 offseasons with Seattle. The first was in his first months on the job, in the winter of 2010, to retain kicker Olindo Mare. The other time was to buy a month and a half to do a trade-and-sign deal sending pass rusher Frank Clark to Kansas City, in April 2019.
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Walker and Shaheed, plus 2022 Pro Bowl cornerback Riq Woolen, outside linebacker Boye Mafe, starting cornerback Josh Jobe and starting safety Coby Bryant all are days from entering unrestricted free agency for the first time.
The second NFL contract for draft choices is the deal football players have worked for since high school. The second contract, unlike slotted, four-year rookie deals, brings tens of millions. Generational wealth.
Seattle Seahawks general manager John Schneider hugs Seattle Seahawks running back Kenneth Walker III (9) after beating the New England Patriots 29-13 in Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium on Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026, in Santa Clara, Calif.
If pending free agents haven’t struck new deals to stay in Seattle by this point, Schneider and the Seahawks typically invite those players to shop in the open market and ask them to bring back their best offer. They ask that the Seahawks get an opportunity to match.
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That’s a tough ask for 20-somethings experiencing their first NFL bidding wars, driving up their values to dream-like levels.
That’s how Shaheed’s and Walker’s prices may be heading beyond what Schneider and his contract planners have slotted for them.
Walker would be only the fourth Super Bowl MVP in the 43 years of the NFL’s modern free agency to play the following season for a different team other than the defending champion.
Shaheed said within hours of arriving with the Seahawks in a trade from New Orleans the first week of November he wanted to be with Seattle for as long as he could see.
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Then he returned a punt for a touchdown in the fourth quarter of a game in early December when the Seahawks trailed the Rams by 16 points. Seattle rallied to win in overtime. Without Shaheed’s return, the Seahawks likely would not have won the NFC West. The Rams, not the Seahawks, would have had the NFC’s top seed for the inside track to the Super Bowl.
In Seattle’s first playoff game Shaheed jump-started a rout of San Francisco with a touchdown returning the opening kickoff.
That was well worth the fourth-round pick plus a fifth-round choice in this spring’s draft Schneider sent to the Saints to acquire Shaheed, whom the GM long coveted. The trade happened in the first days of November, as the Seahawks were learning Tory Horton, their rookie kick returner and wide receiver was out for the season with a shin injury.
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Horton had two touchdowns in a win at Washington days earlier.
Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Tory Horton (15) celebrates his touchdown catch with Seattle fans during the second quarter against the Washington Commanders in the game at Northwest Stadium on November 02, 2025 in Landover, Maryland. (Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images)
The Tory Horton factor
Last week at the combine Schneider called the trade for Shaheed “a huge blessing.”
“He knows we’d love to have him back,” Seattle’s GM said.
There is talk around the league some teams may value Shaheed at up to $14 million per season, or more. That is likely too rich for the Seahawks. They believe Horton will be ready for training camp this summer; he was walking the parade route celebrating with fans along 4th Avenue in downtown Seattle during the team’s Super Bowl victory parade this month.
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“I know he got fixed up,” coach Mike Macdonald said of Horton last week at the combine. “So we’re just working through it.
“Not gonna do anything in the spring. That’s all I know, honestly.”
The team sees Horton as perhaps a better, speedy, deep-threat wide receiver than Shaheed, though not as game-breaking a kick returner. Horton was a star in training camp as a rookie last summer.
Because of the four-year investment of drafting Horton last spring, the Seahawks’ value on Shaheed appears to be primarily as a kick and punt returner, not as a wide receiver, too. That’s how and why they likely value Shaheed lower than other teams in the open market may be willing to pay.
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The Seahawks have an estimated $58 million in space under the league’s salary cap of $301.2 million for 2026. That’s the NFL’s sixth-most spending power.
Seahawks wide receiver Tory Horton walks along the Super Bowl parade route as fans react on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, in downtown Seattle.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Devon Witherspoon deals
Some of the Seahawks’ cap space is likely to go to re-signing NFL offensive player of the year Jaxon Smith-Njigba and three-time cornerback Devon Witherspoon to extensions as they enter the final years of their rookie deals. That’s likely to happen around the time training camp begins in late July.
“It’s been part of our planning process,” Schneider said.
“I mean, we definitely…those are two pretty good players.”
Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba (11) speaks to the media during the Super Bowl Opening Night Ceremony, at San Jose Convention Center on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in San Jose, Calif.