Health matters: Seahawks giving Abe Lucas a contract extension to bookend O-line
Healthy. So, worthy.
That’s the gist of the Seahawks’ reasoning for giving Abe Lucas a new contract.
Seattle has an agreement on a three-year, $46 million extension with its starting right tackle and third-round draft choice from Washington State and Everett. Mike Garafolo of NFL Media was the first to report that Thursday morning.
The deal comes three days before Lucas, 26, begins the final season of his rookie contract — injury-free, for a change.
Lucas missed the first months of last season. He had patella-tendon surgery on his knee in January 2024, to fix long-term pain. The surgeon who performed the operation told Lucas it would be a full year before he felt better. He returned to playing in 10 1/2 months.
He acknowledged this offseason he wasn’t fully right in the seven games he played last season.
This was the first offseason he trained full go, fully healthy since he’s been in the league. And he’s practiced and played like it this summer. He and left tackle Charles Cross are the surest guys on Seattle’s offensive line that is the key to the 2025 season and beyond.
Now Lucas is going to be around for the beyond.
So will Cross. The Seahawks picked up the fifth-year option they had for 2026 on their first-round pick from the same 2022 draft they took Lucas two rounds later.
The team is seeking a multi-year extension for Cross, too. That would give the Seahawks’ salary cap for 2026 a better charge than the guaranteed $17 million Cross is currently scheduled for in the option year.
Lucas, Cross part of a bigger plan
Coach Mike Macdonald and general manager John Schneider know the Seahawks aren’t going to get back to winning the NFC West for the first time since 2020, meaning home playoff games, meaning the best chance to get back to the Super Bowl for the first time since 2015, if they don’t better compete with San Francisco and the Los Angeles Rams on the line of scrimmage.
The 49ers and Rams have dominated Seattle with their offensive and defensive lines for most of the last half-dozen seasons.
So the Seahawks drafted three new offensive linemen this spring. Grey Zabel became their highest-drafted guard since they selected eventual Hall of Famer Steve Hutchinson in the first round in 2001. Hutchinson scouted Zabel for the Seahawks. He recommended they select the North Dakota State standout 18th overall in late April.
Seattle will also start second-year undrafted free agent Jalen Sundell at center and slimmer, quicker Anthony Bradford at right guard Sunday in the opener against those 49ers. Lucas and Cross are the surest things on the remade line.
Those blockers are doing less this season.
Last season offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb and line coach Scott Huff in from the University of Washington had the Seahawks gap blocking, pulling, man blocking, doing inside zone and outside zone — a potpourri of about every scheme a blocker can do. They mastered none of it. Seattle finished 28th in the NFL in rushing, continuing a years-over-years decline in the running game.
Macdonald hired new offensive Klint Kubiak with veteran line coach John Benton and running-game coordinator Rick Dennison to change that. They have installed one system: outside zone. Dennison’s been coaching it since he won Super Bowls with the 1990s Mike Shanahan Denver Broncos.
“Everybody wants to run the ball,” Lucas said this preseason. “But when you come in and it’s kind of a non-negotiable that we’re running the ball, that’s different.
“So, it’s not some hodgepodge of just a bunch of different stuff we’re just throwing in.
“We put a fullback in the backfield,” Lucas said. “We’re changing it up. We’re doing things differently. It’s like an old-school mentality with a new-school principle sort of thing. ... “We’re going to be elite at the basics, and make sure that they work so we can do it against anybody.”
And now Lucas is going to be a part of it past 2025.
This story was originally published September 4, 2025 at 9:57 AM.
