RENTON, Wash. – With big-money contracts on the horizon for Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson (perhaps over $20 million a year) and middle linebacker Bobby Wagner (likely as much as $8 million a year), many people assume the Seahawks won’t be able to keep cornerback Byron Maxwell.

Seahawks general manager John Schneider sees it differently.

“Quite frankly, one of our first priorities is to talk to Maxey," Schneider said. “He’s going to be a highly-sought free agent after the season, and he should be, but we would like to have the opportunity to try to retain him.”

The Seahawks already have the highest paid secondary in the NFL with cornerback Richard Sherman (four more years for $56 million), free safety Earl Thomas (four more years for $38 million) and strong safety Kam Chancellor (three more years at $19.7 million).

Keeping Maxwell will be difficult, and the Seahawks believe they have a rising star in second-year cornerback Tharold Simon.

Schneider believes the Seahawks are ahead of the game compared to last season, when the Super Bowl trip caused the management team to get a little overwhelmed.

“The good thing is we’ve had our free agency meeting already, about a month ago,” Schneider said. “We did it earlier than last year. We kind of got in a crunch [last year] and I don’t think we did a very good job with it. We're more prepared [this year] for what other people would think of our free agents and what we think of their free agents.

“It felt great to have that behind us before the playoffs started. And we’re having our draft meeting starting down there [in Arizona next week]. We found out last year we got a little behind. I’m not saying we did a bad job with it, but we could have done a better job.”