Signs at NFL combine suggest Tyler Lockett will play in 2025 -- but not for the Seahawks
From the Pacific Northwest to the nation’s heartland, the signs are pointing to Tyler Lockett playing in 2025 ... for someone else.
The News Tribune asked Seahawks general manager John Schneider at the NFL scouting combine Tuesday: Is there a path that the 32-year-old Lockett could come back for an 11th Seattle season, at a reduced salary?
“Yeah, we’ll be talking. Andrew Kessler is his agent. We’ll be meeting with him this week,” Schneider said, off in a corner of the Indiana Convention Center.
“He’s one of my all-time favorite players.
“So ... yep.”
Schneider was then asked: Do you anticipate having Lockett back this year on the Seahawks?
The GM who drafted the record-setting wide receiver and kick returner out of Kansas State in 2015 had body language and a facial expression that didn’t say yes.
“Do I anticipate it? I don’t know,” Schneider said. “I’ll see how the conversation goes, but I don’t ...”
His voice trailed off.
“I’m not sure,” Schneider said.
That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement that Lockett will return. The Seahawks could by releasing Lockett save $17 million against the league’s salary cap. They are currently over it by $6.5 million.
All NFL teams must have their top 51 contracts under the 2025 salary cap by March 12, the first day of the new league year.
Two weeks ago, Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said when asked about Lockett’s future: “I think we’re working through that right now. But those decisions will happen probably when the time comes.”
Lockett talked before the Seahawks’ final home game of this past season, then before and after the season finale Jan. 5 at the Los Angeles Rams that those might have been his final games for Seattle.
After the win over the Rams to end the season, Lockett began his post-game press conference thanking everyone from his teammates through Schneider and all his coaches to the team’s chefs in the players’ dining room and the Seahawks’ public-relations staff for his 10 seasons with the team.
“That could be the last time you put on the jersey,” Lockett said Jan. 5 in SoFi Stadium after his team won the season finale.
“The cool thing is, the beginning of my career it started off against the Rams (in 2015), and maybe the last game of my Seahawks career, possibly, it ended against the Rams.”
He shrugged.
Lockett turns 33 in September. He said he plans on playing an 11th NFL season in 2025. He is entering the final year of his contract. His salary-cap charge on the final year of his current deal is scheduled to be $30,895,000. That would be the Seahawks’ third-highest, behind only quarterback Geno Smith ($44.5 million) and fellow wide receiver DK Metcalf ($31.9 million).
Schneider said Tuesday at the combine he is having talks this week with Smith’s agent on a new contract. It is likely for beyond 2025 to create a more team-friendly cap charge for the QB this year.
Similar to Smith at his current cap number, Lockett is assuredly not going to be playing with a $30.9 million cap charge in 2025.
He knows it will take Schneider and Macdonald to see the value and need in keeping what’s become their third wide receiver at a cost that’s reflective of the contributions he’s made over 10 Seattle seasons in the offense, locker room and community — but also of the fact Jaxon Smith-Njigba (10 years younger) and Metcalf (five years younger) are now entrenched as this team’s top receiving targets for Smith.
In his second NFL year since Seattle drafted him in the first round, Smith-Njigba tied Lockett’s team record with 100 catches this past season.
The TNT asked Lockett following that season finale Jan. 5 in California if he would accept a restructured contract with a salary far lower than the $10 million he’s scheduled to earn for 2025 to play for the Seahawks next season. His answer suggested he’s going to compare what Seattle says, if the team offers him anything, to what other teams might offer.
“Ahh … that’s an agent question,” Lockett said of his representatives, his uncle Aaron Lockett plus Kessler of the Athletes First agency. “I think there’s going to be a lot of conversations ...
“It’s easy to say that, ‘We want you back,’ (which no one directly has) but you still have to be able to have those conversations and figure out what’s going to work, what’s not going to work, what’s the role going to be, all that type of stuff.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2025 at 2:46 PM.
