Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor signed a three-year contract extension Tuesday that will keep him with the team through the 2020 season. A league source confirmed to the Seattle Times and ESPN report that it is a three-year deal worth $36 million with $25 million guaranteed.
The team officially announced the contract Tuesday morning without revealing details.
Chancellor had said on Monday he was feeling good about the progress of negotiations and hoped to retire as a Seahawk, which came a day after coach Pete Carroll had also said things looked positive.
The deal makes Chancellor the third-highest paid safety in the NFL on a per-year basis, according to OvertheCap.com, behind the $13 million of Kansas City’s Eric Berry and the $12.5 million of Arizona’s Tyrann Mathieu and tied with the $12 million per of Miami’s Reshad Jones (Chancellor’s teammate, Earl Thomas, makes $10 million per season.) The guaranteed total of $25 million also ranks among the top among safeties (Jones got $33 million as part of a four-year, $48 million contract signed last March generally regarded as setting something of a floor for Chancellor).
Chancellor was entering the final year of four-year, $28 million extension signed in 2013.
The extension comes two years and one day after Chancellor began a hold out in search of a new contract in which he ultimately missed the first two games of the 2015 season before returning without getting a new deal.
But both sides had said that there was no lingering resentment from that incident and Tuesday’s news makes that even more clear as the team is keeping one of its original members of the Legion of Boom in the fold.
At $12 million a year (the full details of the contract have yet to be released) Chancellor would be the third-highest paid Seahawk on an annual basis behind QB Russell Wilson ($21.75 million per season) and cornerback Richard Sherman ($14 million per season).
Chancellor becomes the first defensive player drafted during the Pete Carroll/John Schneider era to sign a second significant extension with the team (Michael Bennett, signed as a free agent in 2013, has also signed two contracts with the team).
That Chancellor will be 30 next season had some looking at his situation as a test case of how the team will handle its core players going forward as they begin to age.
The Seahawks drafted two safeties in 2017, including strong safety Delano Hill, and also signed free agent Bradley McDougald, appearing to begin to make plans for the turning over of a new secondary.
But Chancellor is now signed meaning the team will now turn to its attention over the next year or so to Sherman and safety Earl Thomas, who can each become unrestricted free agents following the 2018 season.
On Monday, Chancellor said negotiations on a new deal had been “positive on both ends and hopefully it gets done any time now. But I feel like it’s been positive on both ends, both sides have been very productive working together and I’m just waiting to see what’s happening.”
Asked if he hoped to retire as a Seahawk, Chancellor nodded.
“I love this team,” Chancellor said. “They gave me my first opportunity, the only opportunity. And I would love to retire here.”
Chancellor was one of the last to take the field prior to Tuesday’s practice, receiving warm congrats from the likes of Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright as he did, with Wagner playfully pointing to Chancellor to encourage fans to give him a round of applause.
