Where Seahawks are with Rashid Shaheed, Riq Woolen heading to free agency
When Rashid Shaheed was warming up to play against the Seahawks early this fall, John Schneider was already scheming.
Seattle’s general manager walked up to staffers of the New Orleans Saints. The Saints were warming up to play the Seahawks at Lumen Field in week three, in September.
“We want to get him,” Schneider told Saints decision-makers that day.
He told Shaheed that, too.
“He had played us. I told him, ‘Man, I was standing next to you before the pre-game asking those guys (with the Saints) if we could have you,” Schneider said.
“He was like, ‘No way! Really?’”
Really. The Seahawks wanted the Pro Bowl kickoff and punt returner plus wide receiver.
Then they got him. Schneider made a trade for two third-day draft choices to the Saints in early November.
Shaheed then changed the most important games of the Seahawks’ march to winning the Super Bowl.
Now, can the Seahawks keep him?
Super Bowl Most Valuable Player Kenneth Walker with his expiring contract isn’t the only task the Seahawks’ general manager has the NFL combine this week.
More than the college prospects’ meetings and workouts, the league’s annual scouting extravaganza is a fishing expedition for Schneider this year. He’s here in Indiana’s state capital primarily to learn what the agents for Seattle’s key free agents want for their clients.
Schneider has only four picks in this year’s seven-round NFL draft. Instead of primarily scouting players, the Seahawks GM is spending the most important hours of his days before — and through — this weekend’s nationally televised underwear Olympics among college prospects meeting with agents.
Specifically, with the agents for Walker, Shaheed, Riq Woolen and Coby Bryant.
Those are the most prominent of the nine pending free agents from the Super Bowl champions whose contracts have expired.
Free agency begins March 9 with the start of the negotiating period, the league’s so-called “legal tampering” time. The official market opening is March 11.
In addition to Walker’s agents, Schneider is meeting this week at the league’s scouting combine in Indianapolis with Drew Rosenhaus, Shaheed’s agent, plus Woolen’s agent Jason Chayut and Kelton Crenshaw, Bryant’s representative.
Those meetings, in person and by phone, formal in meeting rooms and informal in lobbies and coffee stands, are more important to the Seahawks returning to the Super Bowl to end next season than this draft is.
“We’re down here trying to talk to everybody and get a feel for what the spring is going to look like,” Schneider said, to The News Tribune in a small group of team beat reporters off the podium on the convention center floor.
This week is for Schneider and his team of contract negotiators and analysts to learn initial contract values from agents. The Seahawks decision-makers will take those numbers back to team headquarters in Renton next week to form counter-offers to those players’ agents.
That dance has to happen relatively quickly, before free agency begins in two weeks with the start of the new league year.
“Oh yeah, this (combine) has become like...everybody has to have everybody’s starting point, where they think it’s going to go,” Schneider said of negotiations with Seattle’s pending free agents. “And then you work and start working off of that.’’
Hours after he arrived in Seahawks headquarters for the first time in early November following the trade, Shaheed, 26, said he wanted to be with the Seahawks as long as he could see. That would be mean declining the opportunity to become a free agent for the first time in two weeks, now that his rookie contract Seattle inherited from New Orleans is ended.
“I’m here to stay. I’m here to stay. I’m excited,” he said Nov. 5. “We’ll figure something out after the season ends.”
WIth the Super Bowl won and the parade done through downtown Seattle two weeks ago Wednesday, that time to figure something out is upon Schneider and the Seahawks.
Seahawks 2nd-half MVP
Shaheed was an MVP of the final two months of Seattle’s season. Without his punt return for a touchdown in the fourth quarter of the home game against the Rams late in the season, the Seahawks would not have rallied from 16 points down with 9 minutes left to beat Los Angeles in overtime.
“The Rams game...I still like to pull that thing up on YouTube just to watch it,” Schneider said. “It was pretty special.
“Yeah, he ran right by us (on the sideline) going, like, 140 miles an hour, you know?”
If they hadn’t won that game the Seahawks would not have won the NFC West and conference’s top playoff seed. The Rams would have. That would have meant three road games for Seattle to win to even make the Super Bowl, not the bye and two home wins they got to get there.
In the first playoff game, against San Francisco, Shaheed jump-started the Seahawks with a kickoff return for a touchdown. Seattle rolled from there to a 41-6 victory.
Schneider calls his trade for Shaheed “a huge blessing.””
“Tell you what, great football player. He’s a really cool human,” Seattle’s GM said Tuesday at the combine. “He came in, players welcomed right away. He fit in. He fit in great.”
In 1996, Schneider was in his fourth season in his first NFL job as a scout with his hometown Green Bay Packers. That was the season Green Bay traded for kick returner Desmond Howard.
A few months later, he returned a kick for a touchdown in the Super Bowl the Packers won.
That was a year and a half before Shaheed was born.
Schneider told Shaheed that story soon after he traded for him 4 1/2 months ago.
“It was fun being able to talk to him about like the Desmond Howard stuff when we were with the Packers and how that like changed our season and we won a world championship with Coach Mike Holmgren,” Schneider said.
“It’s exciting. And we’d love to have him back.’’
Shaheed may be the easiest to re-sign among the pending free agents including him, Walker, Woolen and Bryant.
Schneider reiterated Tuesday what coach Mike Macdonald said at season’s end: The team expects Tory Horton to be ready for the start of next season. The speedy rookie wide receiver and fifth-round draft choice had a two-touchdown game at Washington in early November. Days later, he was out for the season with a shin injury. That was the week of Seattle’s serendipitous trade for Shaheed. He took over Horton’s work.
The Seahawks can offer Shaheed kick-returner value knowing Horton can be a deep-threat wide receiver, too.
Will Schneider’s idea of what that will take match what Shaheed’s agents have in mind to keep him with the Super Bowl champs?
“We’ll find out this week,” Schneider said.
“We’re down here trying to talk to everybody and get a feel for what the spring is going to look like.
“And he knows we’d love to have him back.’’
Tariq Woolen wanted
Woolen has said he wants to remain with the team that drafted him in 2022, two years after he converted from wide receiver to cornerback at Texas-San Antonio. Seattle and then-coach Pete Carroll made him and NFL Pro Bowl cornerback his rookie season.
That, his freakish speed and size plus the heavy playing time Woolen had had in all four seasons — 78% this season though he only started seven of 16 regular-season games — means the 6-foot-4 Woolen’s market value is going to be high.
If he gets to the market, that is.
Like with Walker, with Shaheed and with Bryant, the team’s starting safety, Schneider says the Seahawks want to sign Woolen back for 2026 and beyond.
Woolen allowed a huge pass over him to Ricky Pearsall then the 49ers winning touchdown later that fourth-quarter drive in Seattle’s loss to San Francisco in week one. He had maddening penalties for taunting, including one in the NFC title game last month. It wiped out a drive stop and led the Rams’ touchdown that turned a two-score game into a tense, 31-27 victory.
Yet Woolen also rebounded with big pass breakups, including in the end zone. Macdonald kept him on the field with three-time Pro Bowl cornerback Devon Witherspoon and Josh Jobe, another of Seattle’s pending free agents.
“I thought Riq, you know, the first game, little shaky for him. And then I thought he responded,” Schneider said Tuesday.
“I thought he did a really nice job of working through everything. Taking to Karl Scott, you know. Taking to the coaching of Shaq (Griffin, the veteran cornerback who) did a great job with him, kind of mentoring them a little bit. Diggy, too (Quandre Diggs); Diggy came back, you know.
“Yeah...he, I thought a really nice season, really good season.”
Woolen said on locker clean-out day two weeks ago, the day before he got off a vehicle and into the crowd to celebrate with fans at the Seahawks’ Super Bowl parade through downtown Seattle, he wants to re-sign.
But he’s unsure what’s going to happen the next two weeks.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Woolen said. “Shoot, it’s their decision. I’ve just got to play my part.
“If I’m here, I’m here. And that’s it.” Woolen talked two weeks ago how he’s grown from age 22 to 26 in Seattle.
“I played well previous years,” he said. “And people don’t like to compare years to others, but at the same time I feel like I’ve just grown and become a better player throughout each year. I feel like every obstacle that’s been thrown my way, I’ve overcome every, single one of them.
“I just feel like I’ve grown and became a great player.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2026 at 5:54 AM with the headline "Where Seahawks are with Rashid Shaheed, Riq Woolen heading to free agency."
