Should Seahawks Move on From EDGE Dre'Mont Jones?

With the 2025 offseason underway, the Seattle Seahawks will have to make tough personnel decisions based on performance and cap space. Edge rusher Dre’Mont Jones will be one of the team's most heavily scrutinized veterans.

Seattle signed Jones to a three-year, $51.53 million contract ahead of the last season as the team attempted to fortify the defensive front. He has since moved to primarily playing on the edge, and he is the 17th highest-paid player at the position with a $17.18 million annual salary.

Jones is the fourth highest-paid player on the Seahawks roster on an annual basis. Even though he played in all 17 games this season, he only started seven of them. He’s produced average starter numbers since arriving in Seattle, at best.

After a disappointing first season with Seattle in 2023, it was understandable the Seahawks wanted to give Jones an opportunity for a bounce-back campaign.

They still restructured his contract to free up 2024 cap room, pushing money into 2025 and turning some of his salary into bonus money.

Head coach Mike Macdonald took former Seahawks coach Pete Caroll’s experiment of moving Jones to the edge to a new high, with Jones’ snap percentage aligning outside the tackles jumping from 45 percent last season to 85 percent this season.

But at the same time, Jones played just 55 percent of Seattle’s defensive snaps, dropping from 64 percent in 2023. For comparison, defensive lineman Leonard Williams is the highest-paid player on the Seahawks’ defense and played 70 percent of the team’s total snaps even with missing one game due to injury. Jones is the second highest-paid player on the defense.

Here’s a look at Jones’ 2024 numbers compared to his teammates. All stats below are his team ranks this season.

Dre'Mont Jones 2024 Seahawks Snapshot

* statistics courtesy of Pro Football Focus

- 9th in snaps, 2nd among edge rushers (617)
- 3rd in pass rush snaps, 1st among edge rushers (375)
- 17th in tackles, 3rd among edge rushers (28)
- 3rd in tackles for loss, 2nd among edge rushers (7)
- T-4th in pressures, 3rd among edge rushers (45)
- 5th in sacks, 3rd among edge rushers (4)
- 3rd in QB hits, 2nd among edge rushers (11)
- 10th in run stops, 2nd among edge rushers (9)
- 5th in pass rush win rate, 1st among edge rushers (12.9%)

With Jones’ volume of pass-rush snaps, he should be first in edge rusher production based on the contract he’s on. Instead, he was third out of the four who saw significant snaps in tackles, pressures and sacks.

Jones struggles in run defense, which is likely part of why he was moved to the edge in addition to his physical traits. Uchenna Nwosu, who played just over a quarter of the run defense snaps that Jones did, had half as many tackles.

Hall and Mafe are still rising, younger players for Seattle. Both were more productive than Jones, who just turned 28 on Jan. 5 and will enter his seventh NFL season in 2025.

Jones’ most complete game of the season was versus the Atlanta Falcons in Week 7 when he posted two tackles, five pressures, four quarterback hits, one sack and a batted pass.

Williams is making just over $4.3 million more than Jones on an average-per-year basis and had four games with two or more sacks and three tackles for loss. Jones had none in 2024 and hasn’t had a single game of that variety in his 34-game Seahawks career.

There have been games — like against Atlanta — where Jones performs closer to his contract value. But those performances should have been far more frequent.

The Seahawks could easily find a fourth rotational edge rusher alongside Hall, Mafe and Nwosu for far cheaper. That could even be through the draft and would allow Macdonald and his defensive staff to attempt to develop a youthful prospect.

Cutting Jones would bring a significant dead cap hit regardless of when Seattle made the move, but there are better options than others. If Jones was a post-June 1 cut, his dead cap hit would be approximately $5 million less than a pre-June 1 cut designation, per Over The Cap.

It’s unlikely Seattle will find a trade partner to take on Jones’ contract.

Seattle’s salary cap situation is currently $27 million in the red heading into 2025, and cutting Jones via the latter method would allow the Seahawks to save $16.51 million on that figure. With other, more impactful players needing extensions this offseason or next season, moving on from Jones is likely a first step for Seattle to begin sorting through their cap issues.

Although Macdonald’s regime was not in place when Seattle signed Jones, general manager John Schneider was around to make that deal. Schneider would have to punt on the signing and eat the dead cap. From all the evidence, though, it may be addition by subtraction.

Even if Seattle can justify his production in comparison to his teammates, Jones’ contract is far too expensive for how he stacks up league-wide. Jones was tied for 34th in pressures and finished 18th in quarterback hits — highlights on his resume despite still not warranting over $17 million per-year.

Seattle’s recent history of drafting edge rushers has been good. Mafe (2022 draft) and Hall (2023) were both second-round picks, and that duo combined for 14 sacks this season. Build through the draft for the depth and reset the contract timer.