Although Kam Chancellor will likely never play football again, the Seahawks safety cashed in today. $5.2MM of his salary for 2019 became fully guaranteed today, according to Brady Henderson of ESPN.com. As Henderson points out, Chancellor likely would’ve received the $5.2MM anyway because it is fully guaranteed for injury, but the Seahawks are holding off releasing Chancellor outright for cap purposes.
“The Seahawks carried Chancellor on PUP in 2018 because cutting him would have caused his cap number to balloon”, Henderson writes, adding that “the likely outcome, it seems, is that the Seahawks cut Chancellor later this offseason since the cap penalties won’t be nearly as severe as they were last year.” Chancellor suffered a neck injury in Week 10 of the 2017 season that was apparently serious enough to prevent him from ever being medically cleared to play. Chancellor was a longtime member of the team’s vaunted ‘Legion of Boom’ unit, and made four Pro Bowls with the team. Chancellor was a fifth round pick out of Virginia Tech back in 2010.
Here’s more from around the NFC:
- Speaking of the Seahawks, Bob Condotta of The Seattle Times sat down with former NFL agent and current CBS Sports Analyst Joel Corry to talk all things related to Seattle’s upcoming offseason. Corry opined that the team would likely franchise tag star defensive end Frank Clark to avoid letting him hit the open market. Clark’s agent has made bold claims in the media about not settling for anything less than a massive deal, which Corry took to mean the Seahawks are “almost going to have to franchise him.” Condotta and Corry both agreed that the recent report the team hasn’t talked extension with Russell Wilson isn’t anything to be concerned about, but Corry also seemed to indicate he expected Wilson’s representatives to be patient and drag things out.
- The Cardinals are hiring Matt Harriss away from the Lions as their new director of administration, according to Mike Garafolo of NFL Network (Twitter link). Garafolo notes that Harriss will be Arizona’s contracts guy, and that the Lions and Cardinals essentially swapped contract negotiators because Detroit had just hired Mike Disner away from the Cardinals.
- The Saints changed the language in pass-rusher Alex Okafor‘s contract back in December, and the new deal language automatically voided the 2019 year of Okafor’s contract, a source told Nick Underhill of The Advocate. Underhill writes that the deal was re-worked to give Okafor a $400K bonus even though he came up one sack short of the incentive, and it also guaranteed him free agency. Okafor was having a really good year in 2017 before tearing his Achilles, and then re-signed on a cheap deal with the Saints before the 2018 season started. Now fully healthy, the voided year means Okafor will be an unrestricted free agent this March and he’ll have the chance to cash in with a big contract.