The DK Metcalf era is over in Seattle.
Four days after it became known that he had requested a trade, the team pulled off a deal Sunday sending him to Pittsburgh for a 2025 second-round pick, pick number 52 overall. The Seahawks and Steelers are also reportedly swapping picks in the sixth and seventh rounds.
A league source confirmed the trade to The Seattle Times.
That gives Seattle 10 picks in the 2025 draft overall and five in the first 92.
The NFL Network reported that the trade came after Metcalf agreed to a new contract with the Steelers, a four-year deal worth $132 million that keeps him with Pittsburgh through the 2029 season. He had one year and $18 million left on his contract for this season with Seattle.
That gives Metcalf an average per year of $30 million over the next five seasons and makes him tied for the fourth-highest paid receiver in the NFL.
The Seahawks will pick up $10.875 million in cap space but Seattle will also take on a dead cap hit of $21 million.
Seattle was listed as having $68.4 million in cap space following the trade by OvertheCap.com, fifth-most of any NFL teams. However, that did not include the contract of linebacker Ernest Jones IV, who agreed to a three-year, $33 million deal shortly before the Metcalf trade.
The trade comes two days after Seattle dealt quarterback Geno Smith to the Raiders for a 2025 third-round pick and has some pegging the Seahawks as a team set for a rebuilding year.
That, though, figures to be more fairly determined after it is seen how Seattle replaces Smith and Metcalf as well as receiver Tyler Lockett — who was released on Wednesday — with more cap space than it has had in years as well as significant draft capital.
Metcalf requested the trade after some talks with the team earlier this week in which it became clear that the Seahawks might not want to give him the $30 million he had been seeking.
Metcalf wanted an extension on his current contract, a three-year deal worth up to $72 million signed in 2022. The team wanted to bring down a cap hit for 2025 of $31.875 million that had become the highest in the NFL for a receiver.
Now, Metcalf moves on, heading to a team that at the moment has an uncertain quarterback situation, but which could re-sign former Seahawk Russell Wilson, who ended the year as Pittsburgh’s starter. Wilson can become an unrestricted free agent Monday.
Justin Fields started the season as Pittsburgh’s QB when Wilson was injured and also can now be a free agent but could also re-sign with the Steelers.
Pittsburgh was also reported Sunday afternoon as expected to make a run at free agent quarterback Sam Darnold.
Seattle is also expected to make an offer to Darnold as a hoped-for replacement for Smith.
Metcalf, taken with the 64th overall pick in 2019 after the Seahawks pulled off a draft night trade with the Patriots to move up to get him, ends his Seattle career seventh in team history in receptions (438), sixth in receiving yards (6,324) and fourth in touchdowns (48).
Metcalf signed his extension with Seattle in 2022 in the wake of a first three seasons as productive as any three-year stretch any receiver had in team history. That included setting a team record with 1,303 yards in 2020 and catching 10 touchdowns in 2020 and 12 in 2021.
Those two seasons came in Russell Wilson’s last two as Seattle’s QB.
Metcalf appeared to pick up where he left off with Wilson when Smith took over in 2022 with 90 receptions for 1,049 yards that season and 66 for 1,114 in 2023.
But Metcalf battled a mid-season knee injury in 2024, which caused him to miss to games, and finished with 66 receptions, tied for his fewest since his rookie season in 2019, and 992 yards, only the second time in the last five years he had not topped the 1,000-yard mark.
Metcalf’s trade request appeared to be based mostly around wanting to be paid among the top receivers in the NFL and the Seahawks appearing to balk at that desire.
Some also theorized that Metcalf wanted to play in warmer weather and with a team with a more stable QB situation. But Pittsburgh fits neither of those.
Seahawks general manager John Schneider confirmed during an appearance on Seattle sports 710 Thursday afternoon that Metcalf had asked for a trade.
“Everything is in a very cordial, professional place,’’ Schneider said. “Obviously DK has requested a trade and we are entertaining that. We are talking to a ton of teams, taking offers, seeing what that looks like, and, yeah, here we go.’’
But Schneider said Seattle would not just give Metcalf away and instead the team could hold on to Metcalf through the 2025 season.
“The thing to understand here is that our responsibility (to team chair) Jody Allen, the 12s, first and foremost, is doing what is absolutely best for the organization, A, and then B, what’s best for the player,’’ Schneider said. “Hopefully both those things merge and it’s an ideal situation. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Hopefully in this situation it does — that’d be great. But worst-case scenario we have an amazing, explosive, powerful, athlete playing receiver for us again in 2025. So we’ll see where this goes.’’
Sunday gave the answer — Metcalf is headed to the Steelers and Seattle now has a lot of holes to fill with its offense, needing to find a quarterback and a receiver or two.
This story will be updated.
