Source: Seahawks trade DK Metcalf to Steelers for 2d-rd pick-and talking to Aaron Rodgers?
Ask, and he receives.
And the dramatic overhaul of the Seahawks’ offense continues.
Days after DK Metcalf requested a trade and the Seahawks told him they would explore getting him one, a league source confirmed to The News Tribune Seattle agreed Sunday to send the two-time Pro Bowl wide receiver to Pittsburgh for the Steelers’ second-round pick, 52nd overall, in the NFL draft next month.
That’s the same round in which the Seahawks drafted Metcalf seven years ago.
The Seahawks and Steelers are also flipping their picks in rounds six and seven of next month’s draft in the trade.
As part of the trade, the Steelers agreed to a new contract for Metcalf. It’s for five years and up to $150 million, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported. That $30 million per year would put Metcalf in the top five of all NFL wide receivers in average annual contract value.
The 27-year-old Metcalf was scheduled to enter the final year of his three-year, $72 million contract with the Seahawks. The 6-foot-4, 235-pound wide receiver with a 10-second 100-meter dash and vertical leap of more than 42 inches was to earn $18 million in 2025 with Seattle.
General manager John Schneider was believed to have dropped his asking price to acquire Metcalf in the last couple days from a first- and a third-round pick to a second rounder. And that’s when the Steelers stepped up.
Schneider has traded quarterback Geno Smith, to Pete Carroll’s Las Vegas Raiders, and now Metcalf in a span of three days. That has cleared $42.4 million in space under the 2025 salary cap for Seattle.
Last week the Seahawks were more than $6 million over the salary cap with which they must comply by Wednesday.
Now, after also releasing Tyler Lockett, the team’s longest-tenured player after 10 years in Seattle, this past week the Seahawks have an estimated $68.4 million in cap space. That’s good money to shop.
That doesn’t include the pending breakdowns of how the team structured the new contracts Seattle agreed to Sunday to keep linebacker Ernest Jones and defensive tackle Jarran Reed.
That vaults the Seahawks into the market for the top quarterbacks — the top offensive linemen, the top pass rushers, the top anybody they need — in free agency that begins with the annual negotiating period starting Monday.
Aaron Rodgers?
The Seahawks intend to negotiate with free-agent quarterback and four-time NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers on a possible new contract, Dianna Russini of The Athletic reported Sunday.
Schneider worked with the 41-year-old Rodgers when the GM was a top personnel executive with Green Bay and Rodgers was starring for the Packers.
The fact that was in the late 2000s is, yes, an issue.
But the Seahawks are now in position to sign a quarterback they believe can be a bridge between Smith and a passer they intend to draft next month.
Seahawks’ new draft assets
The Seahawks also now have five choices among the first 92 picks in the draft that begins April 24. They have the 18th-overall selection in round one, two picks at 50th and 52nd overall in round two and choices 82nd and 92nd overall in round three.
“The thing to understand here is: Our responsibility to (team chair) Jody Allen, to the 12s, first and foremost is doing what’s absolutely best for the organization, A,” Schneider said Thursday, talking about Metcalf’s trade request to KIRO-AM radio “And then, B, what’s best for the player.
“Hopefully, both those things merge and it’s an ideal situation. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes it doesn’t.”
It just did.
The Metcalf and Smith trades will become official with the start of the new league year on Wednesday.
Metcalf leaves the only NFL team he’s known in his six-year career. Seattle traded up into the end of the second round to select Metcalf in the 2019 draft.
That was months after a doctor told him in 2018 he’d never play again. That was after Metcalf broke a bone in his neck on a kickoff playing for his hometown University of Mississippi.
This story was originally published March 9, 2025 at 5:22 PM.
