Seahawks learning that keeping everyone happy is harder than keeping everyone

Can’t keep everyone.

Those were Bobby Wagner’s words on Friday. He signed a four-year contract extension on Saturday, however, showing – once again – that Seattle has been able to keep more of its core of young talent than anyone in the league imagined three years ago.

Keeping everyone happy, however, is downright impossible. That’s evident with Kam Chancellor absent from Seattle’s training camp through the first three days, holding out to the tune of $30,000 per day in the hopes he gets more money on a contract that has three seasons remaining.

And as Seattle strives to sustain success in a salary-capped league that legislates parity, it’s important to understand the threads that connect Wagner’s current satisfaction with his new contract and Chancellor’s desire for a new deal.

Because there was a time Chancellor was in Wagner’s situation. Just two years ago, in fact, when he signed an extension heading into the 2013 season that was more lucrative than anyone expected. He had a year remaining on his rookie contract at the time, and instead of squeezing every last drop of Pro Bowl play at that bargain price, Seattle signed Chancellor to a four-year extension before the 2013 season that paid him a $5 million signing bonus a year before he was scheduled to hit free agency.

The size of the contract was considered a surprise. After all, All-Pros Earl Thomas and Richard Sherman were in line for paydays a year from now, and after Russell Wilson’s rookie season, it was evident that Seattle had to look down the road a couple years anticipating a huge contract for him.

After all, the NFL has a hard salary cap. A very finite limit on the amount that can be spent on players, which means the only thing more challenging than getting good in this league is staying good. And yet over the past three years the Seahawks have signed no less than seven starters – six of them Pro Bowlers – to contract extensions a year ahead of free agency.

So the only surprise coach Pete Carroll expressed after this week’s extensions for Wagner (four years, $43 million) and Russell Wilson (four years, $87.6 million) is how many people were surprised that Seattle was able to pull it up.

“We’ve continued to do our work,” Carroll said. “There’s really no surprises if you watch us.”

The formula is actually pretty straight forward.

Find a player you believe will be a central cog in your future. Wait until he has one year remaining on his existing deal. Offer to glue multiple years onto that final year with the carrot of a sizable signing bonus when he agrees.

For the player, he’s getting a windfall a year before he was scheduled to hit free agency. The team, however, is the one that gets multiple benefits. First, it’s able to divide the salary-cap cost of that signing bonus over an additional year since there’s a season remaining on the existing contract. Also, because the player is not a free agent, it improves the team’s bargaining position. It is offering a chance for the player to get an immediate raise rather than asking what it will take to leave as a free agent. If the price is too high, the player is free to play out the final year of the deal.

It’s not unlike a baseball team that extends a player’s contract before he’s eligible for free agency, which is exactly what the Seattle Mariners did first with Felix Hernandez and then with Kyle Seager. Seattle was willing to sacrifice the short-term savings of holding them to arbitration years for the long-term benefit of preventing them from getting to free agency where the price might spike.

Of course, the strategy only pays if the player keeps improving, and for the Seahawks, the results have been nothing short of incredible. Max Unger was chosen for the Pro Bowl the season after he signed his extension. Chancellor, Thomas and Sherman have all continued their ascent. Throw in Doug Baldwin and there’s not one player whose contract Seattle extended whose performance has slipped in the slightest.

And that’s where the current difficulty with Chancellor comes in. Two years ago, there was a moderate level of surprise at the size of Chancellor’s four-year, $28 million extension, which included a $5 million signing bonus.

That deal doesn’t seem as sweet to Chancellor now that he’s scheduled to make $4.5 million in 2015 and has two more seasons remaining.

“You can see there’s some difficulty in it,” Carroll said, addressing the topic of extensions in general and not Chancellor in particular. “Some guys got their deals a few years ago, and they look at it now, and it doesn’t seem the same for them.”

Cleveland safety Donte Whitner is older than Chancellor, and he’s not as good as Seattle’s strong safety yet he’s scheduled to make more this year.

You could argue that’s a benefit Seattle should reap for being an early investor in Chancellor’s future. You could also argue that it’s a reason for Chancellor to dig in his heels and seek a better deal.

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