Why Seahawks teammates and even coaches support Chancellor’s holdout

RENTON — Resent Kam Chancellor?

Ha! You’ll have an easier time finding a 49ers fan in a Colin Kaepernick jersey on the grass berm at Seahawks training camp each day at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center than you will finding a player, coach, staffer, gardener or parking attendant offer even a raised eyebrow over the thumping strong safety’s holdout.

The ultra-popular team leader seems more beloved here than ever, two days into his stay-away stance to get more than the $4.45 million he’s guaranteed this year.

Just a mere mention of Chancellor’s name made defensive mate K.J. Wright shake his head for almost a full minute after Saturday’s sun-splashed, two-hour workout.

“Man, we are losing our identity without him coming in,” Wright said. “That’s one guy I love, just practicing with, playing with, just coming into the locker room with him there. You just feel something is missing.

“I hope he can get something figured out and we get him back here. Because that’s our captain.

“I know he wants to be here. He just needs to handle himself first and he’ll be out here.”

Wright broke his foot in December 2013 and had to prove himself to get his contentment. The weakside linebacker did, in December, when in the final months of his Seahawks deal he signed a $27 million, four-year contract extension.

Yet is it not something of a conflicted — if not just plain bad — message for the rest of the team when its leader, Chancellor, isn’t setting the example by being here and grinding through hot days of training camp with everyone else?

Wright laughed loudly. He almost scoffed at that idea, really.

“Nah!” he said. “Not at all. Players, we stick together. We know why he’s not here. We back him up — I back him up — 100 percent. I understand the situation, because I’ve been in his shoes. Everybody wants what they want. This is the way to get the job done.”

Here’s why Russell Wilson is talking to Chancellor almost daily, telling his defensive captain he’s behind him. Here’s why Michael Bennett, himself unhappy one season into his four-year, $28.5 million deal, said Chancellor is “making the right decision. And I back him 100 percent.”

Here’s why even coach Pete Carroll backs Chancellor, at least publicly, texting him regularly and calling him an “awesome Seahawk” and saying “we love him in every way” and “our hearts go out to him.”

Here’s the crux of this:

Those in this almost-nothing-is-guaranteed league know the window for big earning is so small and can slam shut so instantaneously because of injury or even a bad few games. And, sure, they are wealthy today. But they aren’t just playing for themselves, or just for today.

Unlike in Major League Baseball and pro basketball with their fully guaranteed contracts, an NFL player has to get his when he can get it. Because it — or he — may not be there tomorrow.

“You’ve got to!” Wright said, appreciating the recognition of how NFL players think. “We are so young — I’m 26 — and we’ve got to make this last … we are trying to make this last for our grandkids. So this is the only opportunity that most of us have, that we can get, you know, to set up our family for generations to come. Most of us are not going to get out there in life and be owners of the Seahawks, you know what I’m sayin’?

“You’ve got to get what you can, when you can.”

Chancellor turned 27 in April. He grew up one of five children to a single mother, Karen Lambert. She raised her kids in the crime-filled Park Place neighborhood on the west side of Norfolk, Virginia, while working two jobs for as long as anyone can remember. Chancellor has older acquaintances in his hometown, guys he used to look up to there, who now look up to him as the huge success and tell him “Don’t forget about us.”

He doesn’t. Over Memorial Day he was back in Norfolk for “Bam Bam’s Spring Jam,” an annual barbeque and community event to help his “Kam Cares” foundation. Seemingly half the Seahawks roster flew to Virginia to attend and support Chancellor. Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Bobby Wagner, Marcus Burley and Marshawn Lynch were among them, also taking part in a rollicking celebrity basketball game at Chancellor’s Maury High School.

Lynch may be whom Chancellor is following right now. Lynch held out of the first week of last year’s training camp before the Seahawks moved up future money into $1.5 million more in additional guarantees for him in 2014. As an additional sweetener to get the league’s leading rusher since 2011 into camp, the team waived its fines for him missing those practices.

Chancellor has three seasons and $16.45 million in base salaries remaining on the four-year extension he signed in April 2013. His base pays of $5.1 million for 2016 and $6.8 million for ‘17 are not guaranteed. That is likely what he wants the Seahawks to address while he holds out.

With his hard-hitting style and the myriad injuries he’s been having — a hip surgery before last season, bone spurs in his feet for which he contemplated surgery last September, balky ankles and knees, then a medial-collateral ligament injury two days before February’s Super Bowl for which he avoided surgery — Chancellor frankly may not expect to play too many more seasons. Thus he is likely seeking Lynch-like, additional guaranteed money while he can, as Wright put it.

So far, even while Chancellor’s subject to fines by the team up to $30,000 for each practice he skips, it sounds and feels like a most Kumbaya holdout.

“Obviously Kam has out-played his contract,” Bennett said. “Back in the Super Bowl he hurt his knee in practice and he came and played in the game and made some perfect plays. I think Kam is, for him, he is making the right decision. And I support him 100 percent.”

So does Wilson — though it became a lot easier for the quarterback to feel that way as of Friday. That’s when he signed the second-richest per-year deal in the league at an average of $21.9 million over the next four seasons.

“It’s all business, it’s one of the parts of the game. It’s not just this circumstance here, it’s everywhere,” Wilson said. “I’ve been talking to Kam. He wants to be out here, and he’s a guy that’s so determined and a guy that I respect the world out of and that gives his heart and soul every day, and every guy on this team knows that.

“Guys like Michael Bennett, too as well, and other guys. They play so hard ever play, and I respect the process of it all. And I understand what they’re going through in terms of their decision or whatever. So you have to just respect that and let them do whatever they feel is necessary.”