John Schneider not going to ‘throw money’ to fix Seahawks offensive line

The Seattle Seahawks can go into the offseason with the approach that they are a bad team. They aren’t. The issue might be worse than simply being bad. Sometimes being mediocre, which the Seahawks certainly have been over the past few seasons, is more difficult to overcome than just being not good.

The team does have some glaring deficiencies, though. The offensive line is the greatest of those. There is no real argument that Seattle’s O-line in 2025 was anything but one of the worst units in the league. While the group gave up 54 sacks this past season, it was even worse in terms of run-blocking.

Every position except Charles Cross at left tackle should be reviewed for an upgrade. Right tackle Abraham Lucas is decent when he is healthy enough to play, but he has only shown up in 13 out of 34 games over the last two seasons. There is no guarantee that he will ever be able to stay healthy enough to be counted on week-to-week.

John Schneider clearly does not want to spend a lot of money on the Seattle Seahawks offensive line

Left guard Laken Tomlinson was not the worst guard in the league in 2024, but he is past 30 years old and Seattle needs to find a longer-term replacement. The team has seemingly not yet completely believed in Olu Oluwatimi at center because Seattle signed free agent Connor Williams to be the starter at the spot. Williams then retired midway through the season.

Right guard was just a rotating mess. Anthony Bradford was given every chance to start, and he failed. He was injured late in the year and Seattle chose to start 2024 sixth-round pick Sataoa Laumea over third-rounder Christian Haynes. Whoever played right guard, though, was terrible.

So how do the Seahawks fix the offensive line? General manager John Schneider has never been one to choose an interior offensive lineman high in the draft. Seattle will create some cap room by releasing or restructuring the contracts of some players under contract through 2025, but Seattle is not going to spend a lot of the new cash on an offensive lineman.

Schneider said as much on his John Schneider Podcast on Seattle Sports 710 AM last week. The GM knows there is a “perceived” need along the line, but last year he said guards are over-drafted and overpaid. His outlook hasn’t seemed to change this offseason.

Schneider said, “We know exactly what our deficiencies are. We can all see it, right? And we have a plan to address everything… You can’t just throw money at something to fix (the offensive line), to fix a perceived need. We’ve made mistakes there in the past, and we’re not trying to repeat the mistakes we made.”

But Seattle hasn’t really tried to spend a lot of money on an interior lineman. The team has brought in free agent guards but has not tried to sign one of the top available players at the position. Money does not always fix things, but the Seahawks could try to disprove that theory with a bit more aggression in free agency.