Tyler Lockett plans on playing another NFL season

RENTON — Tyler Lockett is clear: He plans on playing next season.

Will the 32-year-old wide receiver’s 11th year in the NFL again be with the only pro team he’s known, the Seahawks?

He smiled.

“I’m not the GM,” Lockett said Thursday, three days before eliminated Seattle’s final game of the season, at the NFC West-champion Los Angeles Rams.

Then he laughed.

“So, I can’t make that decision,” he said. “Obviously, even when I got the chance to come back here this year and start this new regime, build this new team that Mike (coach Mike Macdonald) wants to build, I got a chance to be a part of that and I got a chance to come back. Because I didn’t know I was going to come back for this season.

“The fact they brought be back, I think that spoke a lot of volumes.”

Whether it’s with a new team for the first time, a new contract, adjusting to a new, reduced deal that began this season, something must change for Lockett to play in the 2025 season.

His salary-cap charge on the final year of his current contract is scheduled to be $30,895,000. There is no way he will play for the Seahawks, or anyone else, at that number.

“Yeah, I mean, it went through my mind that the Vikings (game Dec. 23, a 27-24 home loss) could have been my last home game here,” Lockett said Thursday. “It went through my mind that maybe this could be my last Thursday practice, or my last Friday practice, you know with being part of the team.”

He knows it will take general manager John Schneider and Macdonald to see the value and need in keeping what’s become their third wide receiver at a cost that’s reflective of the contributions he’s made over 10 Seattle seasons in the offense, locker room and community — but also of the fact Jaxon Smith-Njigba (10 years younger) and DK Metcalf (five years younger) are now entrenched as this team’s top receiving targets for quarterback Geno Smith.

Lockett’s gone from 122 targets last season, his fifth consecutive year with at least 100, to just 70 in 16 games entering the season finale Sunday in Inglewood, California. His catches have gone from a Seahawks record 100 in 2020 to 79 in 2023 to just 47 this season.

Smith-Njigba, in his second season since Schneider selected him in the first round of the 2023 draft, enters Sunday’s game needing five receptions to break Lockett’s team record for a season.

He says he has “done everything they’ve asked of me.” That includes this season taking defenders with him across and down the field to open opportunities for Smith-Njigba and Metcalf, who enters Sunday 61 yards from his fourth season with 1,000 yards receiving in his six NFL years with Seattle.

Lockett took Smith-Njigba as his younger brother in the spring of 2023, when the Ohio State wide receiver first arrived. He showed him how to prepare, train. play — and now star — in the NFL.

“He’s meant, you know, everything to me, man,” Smith-Njigba said this week. “You know, to come in to have Tyler Lockett and just, you know, one a great person and the ultimate teammate. Ultimate competitor.

“I couldn’t have walked into a better situation.

“He’s a guy that I love. And I’m just happy that we both wear the same jersey.”

But for how much longer beyond Sunday?

Tyler Lockett’s new role

He says “it sucks” that people believe his skills have declined to the point the Seahawks don’t need the dynamic receiver and All-Pro kick returner as a rookie from Kansas State they drafted in the third round in 2016 anymore.

Yet Lockett’s sharp statistical decline isn’t exactly leverage for him to use in the coming offseason months in talks with Schneider and Macdonald about his contract and his future.

And Lockett knows it.

“I think for me, I’ve done what I’ve wanted to be able to do as far as be that player that wants to be able to stand on love and stand on support. Stand on being able to be a team player,” he said. “Obviously, there’s consequences that come with that.

“You know, there are times where things like that backfire (in the offseason). Because during the season, it’s all about team. And then in the offseason, it is about individual stats and it is about individual performances and if you lived up to the expectations or the things that we wanted from you.

“So, sometimes there are cons that come with being that great player or being a supportive teammate.”

Yet he says he would do it the same way this season, subverting his production for Smith-Njigba’s and Metcalf’s — per, he says, the coaches’ requests.

“I never wanted to be that guy that had to always say, ‘Throw me the ball. Get me the ball,’” Lockett said. “Yeah, there are times where you might say, like, you don’t feel as involved in stuff. Yeah, absolutely.

“But I do understand why a lot of players, especially in our position as receivers, do demand the ball or do say certain things to be able to get the ball. Because, again, in the offseason that’s all that matters, is: what did you do as an individual?

“But when it comes to building a team and trying to build that championship aura of a team, it’s all about team in the season.

“And so it’s hard to be able to balance out team as well as individual because as a player, you know what happens at the end of that season.”

He’s earned over $90 million in his 10-year NFL career with the Seahawks. That includes two contracts he renegotiated to save the team salary-cap space in two different years.

He could retire, of course. He’s recently married and anticipating the arrival soon of his first child.

He’s started a successful real estate career in the last several years. He’s into spoken word. He’s active philanthropically across Western Washington and in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

That’s the hometown of Seahawks legend and Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver Steve Largent. Two weeks ago Lockett won the team’s Steve Largent Award for the third time. The Seahawks give the Largent Award annually after a player vote. It is given to the player or coach who, the team states, “best exemplifies the spirit, dedication and integrity of the Seahawks.”

Lockett, Russell Wilson and early 2000s fullback Mack Strong are the only players to win the Largent Award three times. Strong won it five times.

“I think it’s incredible,” Lockett said, “because I think this year it might have been a little bit more meaningful to me just because, like I said, I know the sacrifices that I’ve made and the things I’ve had to accept in order to make this season work for me.”

He calls that his greatest contribution to this team that goes for its 10th win of the season Sunday, but will miss the playoffs for the second consecutive season and third time in four years.

“Honestly, I think my biggest contribution to this team has just been sacrifice,” Lockett said. “I think the whole season has been sacrifice. And it’s sacrifice for the betterment of the team. It’s sacrifice for the betterment of the other players. It’s sacrifice for a lot of different stuff, you know. I think that’s really been the whole portion of myself.

“So, yeah, it sucks for me as a player when you hear people say, ‘Oh, he’s too old’ or ‘He’s washed’ or ‘He’s not the same type of player.’ I promise you if you go watch the film, that’s not the case, you know what I’m saying? That’s just the truth.

“But I understand that with sacrifice does come those conversations. It does come with these opinions and different types of theories. So I’m cool with being able to stand on that, because a lot of people in this organization and a lot of people — whether it’s the players or the coaches — understand the sacrifice that I made to try to make this team be the best team possible that they could be.”