What the Seahawks Seattle salary cap situation looks like after 2019

Week 1 of the 2019 NFL season is in the books, and the Seattle Seahawks are hoping for the start of some separation in an NFC West that was undefeated in the first week of the season. One tap for the Hawks is a trip to the Eastern Time Zone to take on the Pittsburgh Steelers in an early start that will be played on a grass surface. The Hawks may have a chance to unveil two new toys on the defensive side of the ball, with both Ziggy Ansah and L.J.

With veterans who have been on the roster for a week, their salary will be reduced to a higher percentage. Thus, at this time it is possible to take a look at the situation in the future.

For starters, we know that as of last week, the Hawks had $ 8,566,271 in cape space by the tweet of Field Yates of ESPN.

Beyond that, we know that the Seahawks need to keep a back door to a player who is a player of the game (usually around $ 3M). KJ Wright, Mike Iupati, Mychal Kendricks and Ansah. Simply ballparking a number for that, I'm going to assign $ 5,566,271, which would allow for a cap carryover of $ 3M from 2019 into 2020.

From there, we can turn our attention to 2020. My preferred cap site is OverTheCap.com, which currently projects the 2020 NFL salary cap to be $ 200M. Adding the $ 3M in rollover from the 2019 season gives Seattle an effective salary cap of $ 203M for 2020, while the team currently has cap bonds of $ 134,840,464 for the 2020 season. Thus, the difference between the two is $ 68,159,536 in available cap space.

Of course, that is not the actual amount of caption the team will have available. The $ 134.84 in cap bonds only accounts for 41 players under contract, so the first thing to do is to fill the roster to a full 53 players. Those 12 additional players at least will cost at least $ 6.12M. In addition, the Seahawks will carry a competitive rate during the 2020 season, which will cost at least $ 1.428M. Next, the Hawks will need to set aside some space, which will be somwhere around $ 3M.

The Seahawks will need to make sure that they will be required to make their picks, which will be required for the first time. months. However, ballparking how much more than these minimum cost picks, we can get some sort of an idea. Thus, the cost of the nine draft picks that the Hawks are currently projected to

• First round pick: $ 1.3M above league minimum
• Second round pick (from KC): $ 500k above league minimum
• Second round pick: $ 500k above league minimum
• Third round (projected comp for Thomas for OTC): $ 200k above league minimum
• Fourth round: $ 175k above league minimum
• Fourth round (projected comp for Justin Coleman per OTC): $ 150k above league minimum
• Fifth round: $ 80k above league minimum
• Sixth round (projected comp pick for Shamar Stephen per OTC): $ 35k above league minimum
• Seventh round (Mike Davis per OTC): $ 20k above league minimum

Adding all of those together yields a total of $ 2.942M.

From there the team will also need to cover the cost of retaining their restricted free agents. The players currently on the roster are RFAs Joey Hunt, David Moore and Branden Jackson. $ 2.10M, it adds a further $ 4.908 the team needs a minimum of $ 2.50M, it adds a further $ 4.908 the minimum needs.

Along the lines of RFAs, the Hawks also had several players in the third year of their contracts who could qualify for the performance escalator. Long story short, the EPP is an incentive for players drafted in round three with seven still on their rookie contract who play or 35% of a team's sneak over their first three season in the league, or 35% of their team's offensive or defensive snaps in two of the first three seasons of a rookie contract. Once upon a time, the base salary for the player in the fourth year of the contract is automatically increased to the original target for a RFA, which for the 2020 season is likely to be in the $ 2.1M. $ 2.2M range.

For the Seahawks, Shaquill Griffin has already hit that threshold, while Chris Carson is a little more than 300 offensive snaps away, only needs to hit 35% of the Hawks' 2019 offensive snaps to have hit the 35% threshold in two of three seasons. Beyond those two, if it is Lano Hill or Tedric Thompson's claim to the return of the requirement for the remainder of the season. That said, at this point, I'm going to base my projections on Griffin and Carson reaching the requirement, and thus, an additional $ 2,798M is needed to cover their raises for 2020 ($ 1.383M for Griffin's raise and $ 1.415M for Carson's).

Putting all of these pieces together, the Hawks will need somewhere in the neighborhood of $ 21.196M ​​to cover all of these, and deducting that amount from the $ 68,159,536 we started at leaves things at $ 46.963M. Now, because we have so much more to do in the course of this project, somewhere between $ 45M- $ 50M in cap space for the 2020 season.

Now, for those who prefer to see you in a more relaxed way, here's what it looks like a spreadsheet style.

Now, $ 45M- $ 50M might seem like a very large amount of cap, but the team does have several issues that it will likely have. As of now the following players are expected to be unrestricted free agents after the season:

In short, Seattle has the space to do what it wants in 2020, but it's got a lot of decisions that will be made in the offseason. Further, if they are not able to allocate the cap space, then they could find themselves bumping up against the cap, just as they did for much of 2017.