Tyler Lockett indicated late last season he might be on the way out in Seattle. Weeks later, the Seahawks are expected to move on. Lockett thanked the team for a 10-season run Wednesday.
He will be released soon, per NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport, as the Seahawks have also since thanked Lockett for his run with the team. This will wrap one of the longest WR careers in team history and send yet another accomplished early-30-something wideout to the market.
Due a $5.3MM roster bonus on Day 5 of the 2025 league year, Lockett will now join Davante Adams, Stefon Diggs, Amari Cooper, DeAndre Hopkins and Keenan Allen as mid-2010s receiver draftees in free agency. The Seahawks chose Lockett in the 2015 third round and saw him form productive tandems with Doug Baldwin and D.K. Metcalf. With the team having seen Jaxon Smith-Njigba make major strides in 2024, carrying both Metcalf and Lockett will not remain feasible.
An obvious Lockett landing spot would be the Raiders, as Pete Carroll coached the former 1,000-yard pass catcher for his first nine seasons. Carroll still holds Lockett in high regard, ESPN.com’s Adam Schefter tweets. Jakobi Meyers is going into a contract year, as the Raiders cut the cord on Adams last October. They will be in search of a No. 1-level wideout, but Lockett would help a team as a complementary target at this stage of his career.
This is not a post-June 1 cut, which means Lockett can sign elsewhere immediately. This gives him a head start on the Cooper-Diggs-Allen-Hopkins contingent; Adams can also sign somewhere now. This release will save the Seahawks $17MM, and it comes after the team created more than $27MM in cap space by cutting Dre’Mont Jones, Rayshawn Jenkins, Roy Robertson-Harris and George Fant. After entering Tuesday over the cap, the team is now up to $32MM in space.
As Smith-Njigba made significant strides in Year 2, Lockett posted just 600 receiving yards in 17 games. The four-time 1,000-yard pass catcher had already taken a backseat to Metcalf, but he was at 894 yards in Carroll’s final season. The former Russell Wilson weapon arrived just after the team’s back-to-back Super Bowl appearances. Lockett’s 8,594 receiving yards trail only Hall of Famer Steve Largent in Seahawks history.
The Seahawks had given Lockett extensions in 2018 (three years, $31.8MM) and ’21 (four years, $69.2MM). Lockett, 32, also agreed to a reworking last year. It adjusted Lockett’s contract to a two-year, $30MM deal that created the $5.3MM roster bonus. That put a 2025 release on the radar, as the Seahawks will not pay him the roster bonus nor the $10MM base salary he was owed. But Lockett should catch on elsewhere soon. With so many comparable players on the market, Lockett may not be able to fetch a deal that even matches his 2018 payday for AAV. With Adams and Lockett available, teams seeking veteran WR help have many places to turn.