On the eve of the legal tampering period, the NFL offseason has already kicked into high gear — in large part thanks to the Seattle Seahawks. Just 48 hours or so after shipping starting quarterback Geno Smith to the Las Vegas Raiders, Seattle has agreed to a deal sending top wideout DK Metcalf to the Pittsburgh Steelers in exchange for a second-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft.
The Seahawks had been open about shopping Metcalf in recent days, as it seemed increasingly unlikely the two sides would reach an agreement on a long-term extension before Metcalf hit free agency next spring. The Steelers, for their part, have been open about how important finding receiver help was for them this offseason, and with Davante Adams off to the Los Angeles Rams, Pittsburgh has landed the most explosive option available — and tacked four years and $132 million on to his deal, making him among the game's highest-paid wideouts.
Still, while this match had been rumored for weeks, it doesn't make it any less shocking. So let's dive into it as we hand out NFL trade grades to both teams.
DK Metcalf trade grades for Steelers and Seahawks
Steelers trade grade: C
Maybe this is harsh, but I have a bad feeling about how this is going to work out for Pittsburgh in the long run. Metcalf is an undeniably dynamic player, a physical specimen at 6-foot-4, 235 pounds who can take the top off of any defense. He's put up a combined 2,106 yards over the past two seasons at nearly 16 yards per catch, and he's still smack in his prime having just turned 27 this past December.
But $30 million a year is a lot of money, and Metcalf feels weirdly duplicative of the mercurial deep threat the Steelers already have in-house: George Pickens. That's as true on the field, where Pickens prefers to do his work vertically and outside the numbers, as it is off of it, where both players have ... well, let's just say made their feelings known at times when they haven't been getting the ball as often as they feel they should. Now that they're sharing a locker room, can we really trust Mike Tomlin and Co. to keep this under control when even just Pickens himself proved too much to handle at times last season?
On paper, this duo feels like it would really put stress on a defense, who simply can't devote a ton of attention to both players at once. (It also would seem to be a good fit for the team's most likely quarterback situation next year, as both Russell Wilson and Justin Fields are passers who want to work outside the numbers as much as possible.) But it also feels like it could lead to some real inefficiencies, not to mention how much of an albatross that new contract could become if everyone can't get along. For a valuable draft pick, that's a big gamble.
Seahawks trade grade: C+
A second-round pick is nothing to sneeze at, but I still would've preferred for the Seahawks to try and make it work with Metcalf, who could've made some sweet music with the since-departed Smith and budding young wideout Jaxson Smith-Njigba. It's hard to really understand just why John Schneider has opted to tear things down on the fly, shipping out both Smith and one of his top targets without much of any apparent plan to replace them.
Maybe Schneider will make me eat those words as the offseason progresses. And that is a hefty, hefty price to pay for Metcalf, a very good player who might not be quite as good as his reputation suggests. But with these two moves combined, the Seahawks have made themselves appreciably worse for ... well, for some reason. Maybe Schneider just didn't believe that this core had a Super Bowl ceiling and wanted to get out ahead of a rebuild, but if so, he needed to come away with far more draft capital than he did.