With the NFL’s free agent signing period now less than a week away, big moves around the league are only intensifying.
The latest came Thursday morning when the Chicago Bears traded receiver D.J. Moore to Buffalo for a second-round pick.
That only heightened speculation that more trades could be in the offing, and specifically if Raiders star defensive end Maxx Crosby could soon find a new home, as well.
That inevitably leads Seahawks fans to wonder — if the Raiders do really deal Crosby, could he end up in Seattle and potentially fill what could be a particular position of need this offseason?
Crosby, who has made five straight Pro Bowls and has 67.5 sacks over his seven-year career — sixth-most in the NFL in that span — is said to want out of Las Vegas. Reasons for wanting out appear to include hoping to land on a winning team before his career gets too long in the tooth — he turns 29 on Aug. 22 — and unhappiness that the Raiders held him out of their final two games last year, apparently in an effort to earn the top pick in this year’s NFL draft.
It sort of worked as the Raiders got No. 1 pick, even though they actually beat the Chiefs in their final game to give former Seahawks coach Pete Carroll at least a brief happy moment to end his ill-fated one season as Las Vegas’ head coach.
Crosby is “expected to be traded in the coming days or weeks,’’ The Athletic reported on Wednesday.
The Seahawks, meanwhile, were reportedly interested in trading for Crosby last year at this time.
Recall that Albert Breer of SI.com reported that Seattle offered Geno Smith and DK Metcalf to the Raiders for Crosby and were rebuffed, before eventually working out separate trades of Smith to the Raiders for a third-round pick and Metcalf to the Steelers for a second-rounder.
That apparent interest is at the heart of speculation that maybe the Seahawks could again try to make a run at Crosby.
One issue? The Raiders are asking for a lot. The current asking price is two first-round picks and a player, according to Pro Football Talk.
Another issue is a hefty contract that Crosby signed last March 5 — which would have been almost exactly when Seattle would have made the trade offer that Breer reported — of three years and $106.5 million.
That deals runs through the 2029 season, when Crosby would be 32 years old and features a cap hit in 2026 of $35.7 million.
It also features a trigger in which Crosby’s entire 2027 base salary of $29 million becomes fully guaranteed next Wednesday (FWIW, the Seahawks don’t typically guarantee full base salaries in future years).
There is, however, no guaranteed money beyond that so any team trading for Crosby could be looking at his deal as realistically having two more years and then each side going back to the table.
But is that worth two first-round picks and a player?
While the Seahawks have just under $55 million in cap space, a lot of that will go quickly over the next few months in re-signing some of their own free agents now and potentially — if not probably — signing Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Devon Witherspoon to big extensions later on.
The need to spend much of that cap to keep the team together also seems to increase the value to the team of future first-round picks and what are controlled salaries for the life of the rookie contracts.
The Seahawks are obviously in win-now mode, having just won it all and with a roster primed to do so again.
But they also won it all with what seemed one of the clearest definitions of a balanced team the NFL has seen in years.
Not that Seattle doesn’t have stars — Smith-Njigba won the AP Offensive Player of the Year award.
But a defense that on which any given player could be the star on any given play and any given day was the real key to the 2025 Seahawks.
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The Seahawks, for instance, finished tied for seventh in sacks in 2025 despite blitzing just 19.3% of plays — the seventh-lowest percentage in the NFL — and no player had more than seven sacks.
That stat served as a tribute to Seattle’s overall defensive depth; what everyone involved described as a rare selflessness of key vets on the front to buy in to what they understood was a scheme that might require them to sacrifice personal stats for team success; and maybe most of all, coach Mike Macdonald’s ability to put it all together.
The way Macdonald continued to develop winning game plans each week this season despite a secondary that underwent constant injury-related change makes you wonder: how many stars do the Seahawks really need on defense?
Seattle’s history of offseason trades that featured dealing first-round picks for veterans — Percy Harvin, Jimmy Graham, Jamal Adams — has also been a little more miss than hit.
The Seahawks have been far more successful making trades for veterans at midseason. Marshawn Lynch, Duane Brown, Quandre Diggs, Carlos Dunlap, Leonard Williams, Ernest Jones IV and Rashid Shaheed all examples of successes and came when the need is obvious and the price nowhere near as high.
But Seattle’s edge rush position has a somewhat uncertain outlook.
Free agent Boye Mafe is generally considered more likely to sign elsewhere than return.
DeMarcus Lawrence is reportedly considering retirement — though Macdonald said at the NFL combine that Lawrence has not told that to him that. Lawrence, who turns 34 in April, in any scenario is year-to-year at this point.
And both Uchenna Nwosu and Derick Hall will be free agents after the 2026 season.
Certainly, the Seahawks will need to do something at the rush end spot this offseason, especially if Mafe gets away.
But the price for Crosby — both in draft capital and salary and cap space — might be a bit much, especially when there may be other less costly options.
This is regarded as a pretty good draft for pass-rushers and Seattle has picks in each of the first three rounds.
“It’s another exciting class, with some of the strengths of this draft really being along the defensive line, particularly the edge rushers,” NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah said last month.
There are also some free agent vets available.
Trey Hendrickson of the Bengals is the top free agent via Pro Football Focus. He’d cost a lot in salary — PFF estimates a one-year deal at $21 million — but not in draft picks.
There’s also Odafe Oweh of the Chargers, who played for Macdonald with the Ravens in 2022-23, and Khalil Mack, who also played for the Chargers in 2025 and at age 35 has said he wants to play one more year. Mack has never been on a team that’s won a playoff game in a career that dates to 2014 and like Lawrence, might be tempted at the chance to get a ring.
GM John Schneider famously likes to say the Seahawks consider everything. There seems a lot to consider here.
Bob Condotta: bcondotta@seattletimes.com. Bob Condotta is a sports reporter at The Seattle Times who primarily covers the Seahawks but also dabbles in other sports. He has worked at The Times since 2002, reporting on University of Washington Husky football and basketball for his first 10 years at the paper before switching to the Seahawks in 2013.