SEATTLE — It's late February. It's Seattle. It's not the most exhilarating time if you're a sports fan.

The Kraken are struggling. The Huskies men's and women's basketball teams are, too. And opening day is more than a month away.

So what do we do? We speculate. And perhaps the chief name involved with such speculation is Seahawks receiver DK Metcalf — and whether he will be back in Seattle next season.

The two-time Pro Bowler is heading into the last season of his three-year, $72 million contract. This is usually the time when a highly-coveted player on the last year of his deal re-ups with Seattle, but it hasn't happened yet.

Maybe it will, but big-name receivers command gargantuan amounts of cash these days, and it's possible the Seahawks don't want to commit. But would they deal him?

I'm certainly not the first person to pose that question. It will be asked throughout the offseason until we know, to a certainty, that DK will remain in blue and green.

It's just ... these rumors and predictions keep popping up. Could Kansas City snag him away to give the Chiefs a No. 1 receiver — something they were conspicuously short on last year? Would new Raiders coach Pete Carroll want to try and reunite with the man he drafted? The Commanders have been mentioned. Would they want to add a weapon for reigning offensive Rookie of the Year Jayden Daniels, who took Washington to the NFC Championship Game last season? We can do this all day, but there's a reason Metcalf's name is so regularly brought up.

For one, he's among the most explosive players in the NFL. His chase down of Budda Baker after a Russell Wilson interception is one of the more iconic regular-season plays of the past few years. The man hung in there with world-class sprinters in a race one offseason, and hasn't shown any signs of slowing down. His stats may have been a bit down last year (he had 992 receiving yards in 15 games), but he is still one of the best deep threats in the game.

Yes, Jaxon Smith-Njigba surpassed DK as Seattle's top receiver last year, collecting 1,130 yards on 100 receptions. He certainly seemed to live up to his first-round-draft-pick billing. But how much of this was due to Metcalf's presence on the field?

Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said repeatedly that he "felt" DK in the game, even if his stats didn't pop off the sheet. Perhaps nobody felt it more than his fellow receivers.

Even so, Metcalf's production has never quite matched his near unrivaled athleticism. It's rare for anyone standing 6-foot-4 and weighing nearly 240 pounds to move as swiftly as DK does. And yet ... he was 25th in receiving yards last year. He was 18th the year before that and 16th in 2022. It's nothing to be ashamed of. But with a rising receiver in JSN, those stats might not be enough to convince Seattle to invest a large sum of money. And they might make potential trading partners reluctant to give up a whole lot.

The Seahawks are, at the very least, going to need a second-round pick if they are going to part ways with No. 14. A first-rounder would be far more enticing. It's unlikely (I'll give it less than a 25 percent chance) that Metcalf will be wearing another uniform next season, but he is certainly one of the more intriguing names out there.

What Seahawks fans most likely want to see is Metcalf be more dominant. He broke the Seahawks' receiving yards record in 2020 — his second year in the league — when he racked up 1,303 of them. He had 10 touchdowns that season, too.

The numbers appeared to be a harbinger of future greatness, but he has never been able to match that sophomore-season output. And in the past three seasons, Metcalf has never caught more than eight TDs.

You never know what might happen on the trade market. The Mavericks dealing Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis earlier in the month caused a collective jaw-drop across the nation. The city of Seattle experienced a similar feeling when the Seahawks shipped off Russell Wilson in March of 2022 despite the quarterback having two years left on his monstrous deal. Let nothing surprise you.

Metcalf has become a staple here in Seattle. He may even be the most popular Seahawk. Still, while it's unlikely to happen, he can be replaced.

This team has been left out of the playoffs the past two years and three out of the past four. They have to find a way to improve somewhere.

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