The Seattle Seahawks acquired wide receiver and special teams standout Irvin Charles from the New York Jets on Wednesday May 27, 2026 in exchange for a conditional 2028 seventh-round pick, a price that, if Charles returns to the form he showed before an ACL injury derailed his 2025 season, will look like one of the better value trades of the offseason. The deal was first reported by The Athletic’s Zack Rosenblatt and confirmed by the Seahawks.
A conditional seventh-round pick from 2028 is the kind of asset that roster-building analysts describe as nearly the minimum price for any transaction.
A seventh-round pick in two years is closer to a courtesy fee than a meaningful asset, a way of making a trade technically a trade rather than a release and free agent signing.
The Seahawks paid the Jets a courtesy fee for a player who posted an elite 90.3 Pro Football Focus special teams grade in 2023 and an 88.6 grade in 2024, the eighth-best mark among all NFL players who logged at least 200 special teams snaps that season.
If Charles passes his physical and comes back from the ACL tear he suffered in December 2024, the Seahawks got one of the better gunners in recent Jets history for almost nothing.
The Jets, meanwhile, moved on from a player they had no roster room for after building one of the deeper wide receiver rooms in the AFC over the past two years.
Who Is Irvin Charles?
The specific path that Charles took to the NFL is the kind that the sport occasionally produces, a player who moved from a major program to Division II, had an extraordinary final college season, went undrafted and then spent a full year on a practice squad before fighting his way onto an active roster and becoming genuinely good at the one thing he was given the chance to do.
Charles began his college career at Penn State, one of the most recognizable programs in college football, with the pressure and competition that implies.
He transferred to Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a Division II school in the Keystone State, and in his single season for the Crimson Hawks in 2021 caught 39 passes for 792 yards and 12 touchdowns.
He became the first player from IUP to reach the NFL since 2008. The fifth-most single-season touchdown receptions in school history. An outstanding number at any level.
He went undrafted in 2022. The Jets signed him as an undrafted free agent in May of that year.
He spent the entire 2022 season on the practice squad, learning the professional game without seeing the field on game days, before being elevated, then released, then re-signed to the practice squad again in 2023, before finally being elevated to the active roster for good on October 11, 2023.
From the moment he got on the field in regular season games, he was good at the thing the Jets needed him to be good at, covering kicks and punts, running downfield at full speed with no concern for his own body, being what former Jets head coach Robert Saleh called “an absolute wolf.”
The Special Teams Grades That Made Teams Notice
The Pro Football Focus grading system assigns numerical scores to every player on every play, attempting to quantify contributions that do not show up in traditional box score statistics.
Special teams grading is where players like Irvin Charles are evaluated, because there is no conventional stat line for a gunner other than tackles and forced fumbles, and tackles alone undersell how much difference an elite gunner makes on field position and return success rates.
Charles earned a 90.3 PFF special teams grade in 2023, the highest mark among all Jets players that season for special teams play. In 2024, he earned an 88.6, the eighth-best grade in the entire NFL among players who logged at least 200 special teams snaps.
Both numbers reflect a player who was not merely competent at the gunner position but among the better performers at the position in the league.
Across 25 games in 2023 and 2024, Charles logged 448 special teams snaps and recorded 14 special teams tackles and one blocked punt, the blocked kick coming against the Tennessee Titans in 2024.
His offensive usage in those same 25 games amounted to 53 snaps, he has never caught an NFL pass despite being listed as a wide receiver.
Charles is, in functional terms, a special teams specialist who carries a wide receiver designation because that is the positional label the NFL assigns to players of his size and role.
The ACL tear arrived in Week 13 of the 2024 season during a game against the Miami Dolphins.
The knee injury placed him on injured reserve and then on the Reserve/Physically Unable to Perform list for all of the 2025 season. He spent the entire year rehabbing.
He is 29 years old and returning from an injury that for most players takes 10 to 12 months to fully recover from.
The question the Seahawks are betting their conditional seventh-round pick on is whether the player who earned those 90.3 and 88.6 grades is still present in the body that spent all of 2025 on the PUP list.
Why The Jets Let Him Go
The Jets’ decision to trade Charles is straightforward once you look at what the roster around him had become.
New York has built one of the deeper wide receiver groups in the AFC over the past two seasons. Garrett Wilson is the unquestioned number one.
The Jets traded for Adonai Mitchell, a long-bodied receiver with excellent contested catch ability.
They drafted Omar Cooper Jr. in the first round of the 2026 draft. They signed veteran Tim Patrick. Rookie Arian Smith had been impressing coaches specifically with his special teams play during offseason work.
A crowded room plus a player coming off a full year on the PUP list plus a rookie who might fill the same special teams role equals a trade.
The Jets received a conditional seventh-round pick and cleared a roster spot. Charles received a genuine opportunity to make a team and continue an NFL career that would have been hard to sustain in New York regardless of how well his knee healed.
The Seahawks’ need was also specific. Dareke Young, the receiver and special teams standout who had become one of Seattle’s most valued gunners and coverage players over several seasons, departed in free agency for the Las Vegas Raiders.
Young’s loss was the kind of roster hole that does not generate headlines the way quarterback or pass rusher departures do but that has real impact on the final score of games determined by field position.
Finding a replacement required finding someone with the profile Young had, a receiver who brings value primarily through what he does with no ball in his hands.
Charles is that profile. So is sixth-round pick Emmanuel Henderson Jr., the other receiver-slash-special-teamer the Seahawks added this offseason as part of the Young replacement project.
The two players will compete for the role during training camp. Charles brings the PFF grades and the professional track record.
Henderson brings youth and the lack of a major injury on his resume. The Seahawks have given themselves two viable options to solve a problem that mattered.
The Physical And What Comes Next
The trade is pending Charles passing a physical, the standard precondition for any transaction involving a player returning from a significant injury.
The ACL tear that ended his 2024 season and claimed his entire 2025 has healed sufficiently that the Seahawks believe it is worth trading for him to find out what he has left.
Whether the physical confirms that assessment will determine whether the deal is finalized.
If it is finalized, Charles joins a Seahawks roster in the middle of its offseason program, competing for a spot on a 53-man roster that will be set when the regular season begins in September.
The window from now until the end of training camp in August is the window in which he needs to demonstrate that the player who was one of the top-graded special teamers in the NFL is still present on the other side of an ACL and a year away from football.
A conditional seventh-round pick in 2028. That is the price. The Jets thought the crowded room made it the right call. The Seahawks thought the upside made it worth the ask.
