Word broke this morning that Pro Bowl safety Kam Chancellor is ending his holdout and reporting to the Seahawks, despite not getting a new contract from the team. The two sides still need to sort out whether or not Chancellor will pay all of his fines and return bonus money to the team, and a player will need to be removed from Seattle’s 53-man roster before Chancellor can officially return. But it looks like he could play this weekend against the Bears.
Here are a few reactions and updates on the Chancellor situation:
- Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times and Ian Rapoport of NFL.com (Twitter links) confirm that Chancellor doesn’t have a new deal in place with the Seahawks, and simply decided to report. According to Rapoport, the 27-year-old flew on a private plane from Los Angeles to Seattle this morning.
- As Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk notes, Chancellor racked up $1.1MM in fines, $500K in signing-bonus forfeiture, and about $534K in lost salary, for a total of about $2.134MM in potential lost earnings. The Seahawks could choose not to go after all of that money, and if they do, it could make sense for the club to waive the fines, since they don’t count against the salary cap anyway, tweets Jason Fitzgerald of Over the Cap.
- One could argue that the Seahawks would be setting a dangerous precedent if they waive all of Chancellor’s fines and don’t go after his signing bonus, since it could encourage others to hold out in the future. But Joel Corry of CBSSports.com (Twitter link) believes that refusing to budge on Chancellor’s contract is a more important precedent — as Corry observes, players won’t be lining up to hold out and miss out on pay checks.
- Still, Corry wouldn’t be surprised if Chancellor requests a trade if the Seahawks don’t meaningfully address his contract in 2016 (Twitter link).
- The Seahawks have received a roster exemption for Chancellor, meaning he can practice with the team without Seattle having to move someone off the 53-man roster for now, per Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times (Twitter links). To make him active on game day, the club would have to move Chancellor onto the 53-man roster.
- There’s no doubt that the Seahawks have missed Chancellor on the field, writes Sheil Kapadia of ESPN.com in his look at what the safety’s return means for Seattle’s defense.