‘A big week’ in standoff between Seahawks and Kam Chancellor

Kam Chancellor's five-week-old holdout has already been costly for both he and the Seahawks. But now we're about to find out if it's going to get even more costly with the season opener just days away, writes Danny O'Neil.

BY DANNY O

Sep 8, 2015, 9:37 AM Updated: 9:51 am

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Kam Chancellor would forfeit a game check worth more than $267,000 for each week of the regular season that he continues to hold out. (AP)

(AP)

Today will give us an idea of just how painful it’s going to get.

Kam Chancellor’s absence from the Seahawks has already hurt. It has hurt Chancellor, subjecting him to more than $1 million in fines for sitting out training camp. It has hurt the Seahawks, taking away one of this team’s leaders in a season that will begin in the shadow of last year’s soul-crushing defeat.

Now we’re about to find out how deep the pain is going to go because if Chancellor is not present for Sunday’s game in St. Louis, he would start missing game checks. That’s $267,000 per week. More than a quarter of a million dollars.

“A big week to see where we are,” coach Pete Carroll told “Brock and Salk” on Monday.

This isn’t a gut check, though. More like a gut punch.

Here is someone who embodies everything the Seahawks want in a player. Chancellor is physical, he is fast and he is a bad (shut your mouth) – we’re just talking about Kam.

But he is also absent, taking a nuclear route to express his contractual dissatisfaction with the kind of holdout that is simply unheard of in the NFL these days. He was the only signed player holding out when training camps opened, and here he is, still absent, which means two things:

1. He’s pretty darn mad. You don’t subject yourself to more than $1 million in fines as Chancellor has on a whim or a bluff.

2. Time is running out for anything other than a scorched-earth resolution on both sides.

No one is going to forget about the holdout if Chancellor shows up this week. Not the team, which felt blindsided by the fact that he wasn’t going to report for training camp. Not the player, who feels so deeply undervalued by the team that he’s willing to cost himself money to get that rectified.

No one does this. Not in today’s NFL. San Francisco offensive lineman Alex Boone held out for a new deal last year in training camp, but that was a player on a rookie contract. Same for Deion Branch, the receiver who missed New England’s first regular-season game in 2006 while holding out for a new deal that he eventually – and for Seattle, regrettably – received from another team.

Those guys were making less than a million a year, though, making a regular-season boycott less costly on a per-game basis.

This is different with Chancellor. Pride is now mixed in there for him while the team is worried about precedent when it comes to contract negotiations.

You can’t set a deadline for a guy who has already shown he’s unwilling to budge until he gets what he wants. You can’t threaten a player who has said he’d rather not get paid than play for his current deal.

But if the two sides were to reach a deal this week, there is the possibility of salvaging this season. After all, it was just a few months ago – following an OTA workout – that Chancellor said this offseason was the best he has felt physically since entering the NFL.

No one is going to win this standoff. The question is how much both sides are going to lose, which is why this week is so important.