- Seattle Seahawks tight end AJ Barner has signed with Excel Sports Management for representation.
- Excel's football division, built on its 2023 acquisition of Rep 1 Football, has been actively expanding its NFL roster.
Seattle Seahawks tight end AJ Barner has signed with Excel Sports Management for representation.
Barner is coming off a breakout second NFL season. The 24-year-old caught 52 passes for 519 yards and six touchdowns in 2025, then added a touchdown catch in Seattle’s Super Bowl LX win over the New England Patriots.
A fourth-round pick out of Michigan in 2024, Barner won a national championship with the Wolverines in 2023 after transferring from Indiana, where he’d been a team captain.
This move echoes a broader pattern of representation shuffling this year: Seahawks teammate Julian Love recently restructured his own setup, signing with Athletes First for brand partnerships while keeping Rosenhaus Sports Representation for public relations.
Excel Sports Management, founded by Jeff Schwartz in 2002, entered NFL on-field representation in 2023 through its acquisition of Rep 1 Football, and the agency’s football practice has kept adding clients into 2026.
That activity fits a wider wave of NFL representation moves this year, including Houston Texans defensive tackle Junior Tafuna’s switch to Young Money APAA Sports and Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Otito Ogbonnia’s move to Aura Sports Group.
Takeaways
Excel Sports Management lands a rising, cost-controlled tight end right as he’s entering the value-building stretch of his rookie contract, exactly the kind of client an expanding football division wants to bank.
Does Excel’s football division, still young next to its basketball and golf arms, need more breakout-caliber NFL names like Barner to establish itself? How much does a Super Bowl-winning, ascending role player like Barner stand to gain in off-field opportunities from a switch like this?
