Seahawks announce addition of new salary cap expert in front office change

As the Seattle Seahawks move forward towards the 2024 NFL season, the changes just keep on coming. The biggest change of the offseason is, of course, the replacement of the most successful head coach in franchise history, Pete Carroll, with rookie head coach Mike Macdonald.

Macdonald certainly has big shoes to fill as he follows the only head coach to bring a Lombardi to Seattle, but the early results of his tenure have may fans excited. The retooling of the roster so far has included the release of the likes of Jamal Adams, Quandre Diggs and Nick Bellore, while allowing Jordyn Brooks and Bobby Wagner to depart in free agency while also adding Jerome Baker, Tyrel Dodson, Rayshawn Jenkins and Johnathan Hankins to the defense. Those moves have largely been met with approval from fans so far, but obviously that could quickly change if the on-field results in September don’t match the offseason hopes of April.

And now, with free agency in the rear view mirror and the draft just over the horizon, the Seahawks have announced a significant change in the front office.

New vice president of football administration Joey Laine replaces Matt Thomas as the top salary cap manager for the Seahawks, and the change could be significant. Thomas, of course, oversaw a cap management style that was among the most conservative in the NFL, and rarely saw the Seahawks get aggressive with their cap management. Rather, the Hawks have preferred to operate in a method more consistent with salary cap management methods from prior to the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, and have largely avoided the use of void years and other tools to defer cap charges.

With Laine in charge, that could all change. Hired from the Green Bay Packers after several years with the Chicago Bears, Laine earned his start in the NFL with the New Orleans Saints. He certainly was long gone from the Big Easy by the time the salary cap situation fully evolved into what it is today for the Saints, however, according to the press release from the Seahawks, “Laine’s 10 seasons with the Saints included six seasons as the team’s salary cap analyst”. So, he’s not to blame for the cap challenges New Orleans has faced during recent offseasons, he was with the franchise in the early years of moving to a more aggressive cap style in the early attempts to squeeze another Super Bowl out of the right arm of Drew Brees.

Seattle fans certainly shouldn’t expect the Seahawks to go crazy with the cap in the coming months and years, but it won’t be a surprise if the team suddenly shifts gears and begins more aggressively dipping into the cap of future seasons as it works through a tight cap situation in 2024 and 2025.