Brady Russell is coming back. Brandon Pili is coming back.
And John Schneider keeps coming back to his offseason plan for the Seahawks.
The idea: To run it back with two frontliners plus many of the “glue” guys, the unsung fabric of the Super Bowl-champion team. To strategically back-fill depth. And to set Seattle up for the draft.
Next year’s draft.
Russell and Pili had been restricted free agents. Schneider, in his 17th offseason as Seahawks general manager, didn’t want to be tied to the values on one-year contracts the NFL mandates for tendering offers to restricted free agents before the league year began Wednesday. Schneider wanted to do his own deals, on his own terms. He knew Russell and Pili wanted to remain with Seattle.
So the GM let each player become an unrestricted free agent, rid of the mandate of a one-year deal at a set cost, and took them at their word they’d sign back. They took Schneider at his word the team would sign them back.
Trust has its dividends.
Thursday, the fourth day of free agency and the second day of the NFL league year, Russell signed a two-year contract. He will remain with the team for which he’s become a special-teams mainstay for coach Mike Macdonald. The two years is twice as long as Russell would have gotten to stay as a restricted free agent.
Russell doesn’t wear a shirt during pregame warmups — no matter the weather. He carries the 12 flag representing Seattle’s fans leading Seahawks out onto Lumen Field before kickoffs of home games.
He’s indeed a part of the fabric of the Super Bowl champions.
“It means the world,” Russell told the team’s website after he signed Thursday. “I was definitely hoping to stay here. We’ve built something really special, and it’s really cool to be a part of the initial team when Mike came in and be a part of what we’ve built.”
Brandon Pili signs
Pili is another whatever-you-need guy the Seahawks wanted to retain. He’s a huge nose tackle who, when Byron Murphy became so good Macdonald couldn’t afford to take him off the field, moved to special teams.
Pili agreed to sign a one-year deal, at the team’s rate, not the restricted free-agent tender.
Pili sparked Seattle’s blowout win at Washington in early November by going on the kickoff team and forcing a Commanders fumble on a return. That set up a Seattle touchdown, and turned a 7-0 game into a 21-0 Seahawks rout in three plays.
Yes, a 334-pound nose tackle running down on kickoff coverage. That was special-teams coach Jay Harbaugh’s idea.
Pili laughed at The News Tribune asking him after that game in Landover, Maryland, the last time he’d been on a kickoff team.
“I wanna say … middle school?” back home in Anchorage, Alaska, Pili said.
He had a huge grin.
“I was surprised. And I didn’t mind it.” Attitudes like that were why the Seahawks had the best special-teams units in the NFL last year, another reason they won the Super Bowl.
The comp picks
Seattle’s third signing Thursday was the team’s first with an external free agent this offseason.
The Seahawks agreed to a contract with former Indianapolis Colts safety Robert Thomas II. The 27-year-old was the Colts’ starting safety his first two NFL seasons, as a seventh-round draft pick and cornerback out of Yale. After he allowed 19.1 yards per completion and a completion rate of better than 63% in 2023, he virtually disappeared from Indianapolis’ defense. He played only 9% and 13% of the team’s defensive snaps in 2024 and ‘25.
That’s a key reason Schneider signed him, for depth with starting safety Coby Bryant leaving to sign a three-year, $40 million contract with the Chicago Bears earlier this week.
Bryant is one of four Seahawks departing that can earn Seattle compensatory choices in the 2027 NFL draft. Kenneth Walker signing with Kansas City, Boye Mafe with Cincinnati and Riq Woolen with Philadelphia are the others.
Because of his scant playing time the last two seasons with the Colts, Thomas signing with Seattle does not count against the Seahawks’ comp picks for next year, per estimates by overthecap.com. That’s per the league’s comp-pick formula, which states players must be in the top 35% at their position to qualify in the comp-pick calculations.
Schneider said at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis last week his trade in November of two third-day picks in this year’s draft to New Orleans to get Pro Bowl kick returner and wide receiver Rashid Shaheed was because the Seahawks don’t see this year’s draft as a strong one. Seattle has only four picks in it.
“You have to evaluate every class. And so we evaluated this class as, ‘OK, ‘25 is going to be stronger than ‘26. And ‘27 may be stronger,’” Schneider said in Indianapolis last month. “It’s not the individual players. It’s kind of the collective, like, the whole group (this year).
“So that’s why you saw us make some of the decisions we made.’’
It’s continuing. It’s obvious the Seahawks’ priority this offseason is to re-sign their own, to run it back minus the free agents that don’t get so expensive, as Walker, Mafe and Bryant did.
Schneider made bringing back Shaheed the top priority — and paid $17 million per season for three years to do it. Seattle now has under contract for 2026 all of its starting offensive players from the Super Bowl-champion team, minus Walker.
The league’s top-ranked defense will return every starter except Bryant, whom Macdonald believes he can replace with Ty Okada. Mafe played only 50% of the defensive snaps last season. Woolen lost his starting job in a rotation with Josh Jobe, whom the Seahawks decided this week to sign back instead of Woolen, at almost half the cost.
This approach has the Seahawks in line for four comp picks next year in what the team sees as a stronger draft: one pick at the end of the fourth round and three selections to end round five.
Seattle currently holds 12 picks in next year’s draft, versus only four in this year’s weaker draft. What’s next?
The team also signed back safety D’Anthony Bell on a one-year contract. Bell signed last spring from Cleveland. He made two starts as an injury replacement and played 66% of special-teams snaps for Seattle in 2025. The team waived him late in the season. Carolina signed him, then released him.
The Seahawks still need a new running back, or two.
Walker exiting plus Zach Charbonnet’s recovery from reconstructive knee surgery that’s likely to last well into the fall mean it’s likely they will sign a running back in secondary waves of free agency.
When?
The first one came later Thursday. The Seahawks signed Emanuel Wilson, a free agent from the Green Bay Packers. He gets a one-year contract worth up to $2.1 million, per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network. Wilson, who turns 27 in May, rushed for 502 and 496 yards the last two seasons playing 34 games with two starts for the Packers. Denver signed him in 2023 as an undrafted rookie free agent from Division-II Fort Valley State.
Wilson played only 19.5% of Green Bay’s offensive snaps in three seasons with the Packers. That and his salary likely will keep him from counting against Seattle in the comp-pick formula.
Schneider said on his weekly radio show with KIRO AM that Wilson will compete with George Holani, Kenny McIntosh coming off injury and others in Seattle’s remade backfield this year.
“You sign a one-year deal like that, it’s kind of like…come prove it,” Schneider told KIRO.
“We’ll be continuing to look at that position.”
Consider that any free agent signed on or after the Monday after the draft, on April 27, does not count in the comp-pick formula for 2027. If Schneider wants to maximize his comp picks for next year, as this week has made it appear he does, Seattle may not sign a more accomplished, veteran running back until late next month. Or later.
That makes 20-something free agents coming off injuries with question marks, such as former Pittsburgh Steelers lead back Najee Harris, possibilities down the road for Seattle’s backfield.
Harris, who turned 28 this week, rushed for 1,000 yards in each of his four seasons with the Steelers. He signed a one-year contract with the Los Angeles Chargers for 2025. He played in only three games for L.A. because he tore his Achilles tendon in September. The Seahawks made one other move on their 90-man offseason roster Thursday. They released cornerback Tyler Hall. He finished last season on the practice squad.
