Chancellor sits out the entire season or the Seahawks trade him.
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As if that were a point that needed to be reinforced.
Carroll added that he is not anxious about the impact of Chancellor’s absence on the locker room.
The conventional wisdom has been that this lapse, and an overall defensive performance not almost as dominant as we’ve come to expect from the Seahawks, might force the Seahawks to rethink their intransigent negotiating stance. That it’s been so long since they’ve started a season with consecutive victories should tell you all you need to know about how hard it’s been for the Rams to find any sort of success, let alone sustain it over the past decade-plus.
“I’ve just been kind of caught up with the season, caught up with what we have going on here”. The Rams have beaten Seattle three times in the past four years at home, knocked off Denver in 2014 and the Colts and Saints in 2013.
“Everything that happened was really fundamental stuff that you can fix”. And that’s also when it’s most crucial, both to show that your convictions aren’t borne of convenience, and to stave off future challenges of your authority. On defense, however, the Seahawks were missing strong safety Kam Chancellor, who is holding out for a new contract, and Byron Maxwell, who left the team in the offseason.
But at the same time, the pressure on Chancellor is growing, too – and not just financially, with his total in possible fines and lost wages growing to about $2.1 million if he misses Sunday’s $267,000 game check.
Chancellor in the meantime is losing money, but gaining leverage. One reason or another, it doesn’t.
There was once a time where, facing the prospect of a game-winning drive with very little time on the clock, you could be assured that Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo would blow it. Those days are gone. “He prepared me well for this last game”. And he has forced the Seahawks to take a moral stand they must maintain, for the objective of staving off future holdouts.
That’s the bind in which Chancellor has put them. “They can’t help but get better”. There didn’t seem to be a plausible exit strategy for Chancellor that would allow him to save face.
On the few occasions the Rams have had a small taste of momentum after a big win, they’ve consistently given it back with a letdown in a seemingly winnable game. And to return with his head held high. Of course they can’t say that they’re still stinging from those losses, because if they lose again, it will be too easy to say it was because the Seahawks were in their heads.
Last year, the Rams were among the most-penalized teams in the NFL. Much of that yardage came in the middle of the field, over Seahawks linebackers Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright, generally two of the surest cover “backers in the league, and under deep safety Earl Thomas”.
“No, I mean, there is not much going on right now”.
As far as the Packers fans are concerned, though, the Seahawks will be about as welcome in Wisconsin as a plague of lactose intolerance.
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That’s probably a pipe dream, I admit. After weeks of talk I finally convinced my cousin Hugo that we wouldn’t get another opportunity to do this, as eventually we’d have families and other priorities.
