As someone who has plenty of experience with NFL contract negotiations and standoffs, former Packers executive Andrew Brandt has an interesting summary of the Kam Chancellor situation over at TheMMQB.com. According to Brandt, the Seahawks were willing to shift about $3MM from 2017 to 2016 for their star safety, but were unwilling to add any new money to his contract.
Meanwhile, although Brandt isn’t sure how much – if any – of Chancellor’s fines and prorated bonus money the Seahawks will actually attempt to collect, he notes that many team executives around the NFL would prefer for those fines to be less optional. The thinking there is that if players faced mandatory fines for holdouts, they’d be less likely to sit out — knowing that the team may forgive those fines, a player is a little more likely to roll the dice on a holdout.
Here’s more on Chancellor, along with a couple other notes from out of the NFL’s West divisions:
- Jason Cole of Bleacher Report (Twitter link) believes that Chancellor doomed his leverage in future negotiations by eventually reporting to the Seahawks, since the team will now have little reason to fear a holdout in the future. I’m not sure I buy that — the club lost two games without Chancellor, and will certainly want to avoid a similar scenario in the future. Once the safety has just two years left on his deal, I could see the Seahawks becoming a little more willing to compromise.
- While there’s “no denying” how highly the Broncos coaching staff thinks of quarterback Trevor Siemian, Troy Renck of the Denver Post expects the club to make a strong effort to retain QB Brock Osweiler beyond the 2015 season. With no guarantee how much longer Peyton Manning will play, Osweiler may still eventually take on a larger role in Denver.
- Former Eagles wide receiver Rasheed Bailey, who signed with the team as an undrafted free agent in the spring but was waived during the cutdown to 53 players, is working out for the Chiefs today, according to Adam Caplan of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Caplan adds that Bailey will likely audition for the Browns next.