Chancellor: 'Bygones are bygones, and we’re ready to play football'



RENTON, Wash. – It’s Kam Chancellor’s turn to buy dinner.

The Seattle Seahawks’ strong safety said Tuesday that his reported new three-year, $36 million contract comes with strings attached.

“That’s like a tradition – any time one of us gets paid, we gotta buy dinner for the group,” he said. “Whatever they want.”

It’s clearly a price Chancellor is happy to pay, as he often wore a broad grin during Tuesday’s press conference at the VMAC as he discussed a contract he started fighting for two training camps ago.

The four-time Pro Bowl selection and coach Pete Carroll both said any resentment over Chancellor’s infamous holdout has long since been put aside.

“This is another illustration of how when you have deep relationships, sometimes you don’t see things eye to eye,” Carroll said. “Sometimes you get going in a different direction, and stuff doesn’t make sense, and we got there. But because of the depth of the relationship, because of the commitment to one another, and to the individual ... we worked our way through it and made sense of it.

“He’s better for it, we’ve been better for it, even though it was a really hard thing. I’m really pleased to be able to tell you that that’s how it works ... when you care about people and they mean a lot to you, you’re able to work through anything, and we did.”

Though Chancellor said this week that he planned on playing the season no matter the status of his contract, he said it was a relief to get it out of the way.

“I’m just appreciative,” he said. “I appreciate the contract and I appreciate what the organization has done for me. It just allows me to be free out there, and I can get back to being the reckless Kam on the field.”

Fellow safety Earl Thomas said Chancellor’s deal is a positive for the whole locker room.

“I was watching very closely,” Thomas said. “You want to see, because I feel like we’re all right around the same age. They’re bringing a lot of new guys in. If the writing’s on the all I want to be able to see it, because I know I’ll be next.

“Like I said, I’m very happy for Kam, and when that time comes, it comes.”

Chancellor said repeatedly that he’s happy for the chance to put everything else aside and play ball.

“I don’t think the relationship ever fell off,” he said. “It was just a process. Everything has a process, and what happened in the past was the past.  I put that behind me two years ago and I was ready to work, and we’re here today back to where we started.

“Both sides in a great agreement, bygones are bygones and we’re ready to play football.”