The @Seahawks have terminated the contracts of two of the most iconic players in franchise history in @KamChancellor and @DougBaldwinJr (failed physicals) this afternoon.https://t.co/AWDSKIqrah — Seahawks PR (@seahawksPR) May 9, 2019 It’s officially the end of an era in Seattle. On Thursday, the Seahawks announced they have released strong safety Kam Chancellor and wide receiver Doug Baldwin with failed-physical designations. Chancellor, who has not played for Seattle since 2017, spent all of last season on the reserve/PUP list because of a neck injury. Baldwin, who just underwent his third surgery of the offseason, had been recently pondering a possible retirement. “The Seahawks have made the difficult decision to terminate/failed physical Doug Baldwin and Kam Chancellor,” general manager John Schneider said via the team’s website. “These are two of the most iconic players in franchise history and both were instrumental in establishing our championship culture, great examples of competitiveness and leadership on the field and in the community. “These legendary players will always be a part of our Seahawks family.” Signed by Seattle as an undrafted free agent in 2011, Baldwin was an unstoppable force on the Seahawks offense. In 123 regular-season games, he logged 493 receptions for 6,563 yards and 49 touchdowns. Baldwin is leaning toward retirement. A release allows him to keep his signing bonus and possibly future injury-protection money. https://t.co/Td561zcUSc — Mike Garafolo (@MikeGarafolo) May 9, 2019<doc-sep>It has become difficult to keep track of all the comings and goings from the Legion of Boom–era Seahawks, who have disintegrated in slow motion over the last two years. The team cut cornerback Richard Sherman, let safety Earl Thomas leave, traded pass rusher Michael Bennett, watched pass rushers Cliff Avril and Kam Chancellor suffer career-ending injuries, made Russell Wilson the highest-paid player in NFL history, and saw Marshawn Lynch retire, then unretire before trading him to Oakland, where he is now re-retired. Keeping track of the Seahawks threads is so hard that even the Monday Night Football graphics team played around with it. The Seahawks officially parted ways with two more key players from that era on Thursday by releasing receiver Doug Baldwin, 30, and Chancellor, 31, with failed-physical designations. The Chancellor release is not news as much as paperwork catching up to reality. Chancellor was a fifth-round draft pick in 2010 who almost immediately became one of the best, hardest-hitting strong safeties in the league. But after he suffered a neck injury in 2017, he announced his retirement in an emotional social media post last July that ended, “P.S. Pray for your boy. I have no clue how these head injuries will go after the game. What I do know is that my God is stronger. Peace and Love ❤️.” While Chancellor announced his retirement last year, he still had money on his contract guaranteed for injury, so he did not formally retire. Releasing Chancellor in 2018 would have cost the Seahawks nearly $20 million in salary cap space. Releasing him now could create as much as $4.8 million in cap savings, according to ESPN’s Brady Henderson. Baldwin’s release is new but expected. Rumors around Baldwin’s health circulated this offseason and reached new heights with Seattle’s selection of D.K. Metcalf with the last pick of the second round in the 2019 NFL draft. Baldwin missed the entire preseason last year with a knee injury, and when he returned in Week 1, he suffered an MCL tear in his other knee. He still played 14 of Seattle’s 17 games, including the playoffs, but he admitted in August before the MCL injury he would not be at 100 percent health at any point during the year. Baldwin had multiple surgeries this offseason, including ones on his knee, and sports hernia surgery last month. He described the 2018 season as “hell.” With the release of Baldwin, who will carry a $6.3 million cap hit for 2019, the Seahawks will have a receiving corps led by wide receiver Tyler Lockett, Jaron Brown, David Moore, and rookies Metcalf and Gary Jennings Jr., plus tight ends Will Dissly and Nick Vannett. It’s an underwhelming group for Wilson to work with, though Lockett proved he was capable of carving out a larger role for himself. Lockett led the Seahawks in receiving in 2018, the first year since 2013 that Baldwin was not Seattle’s leading receiver. Still, when the team needed Baldwin, he always made things count. If Baldwin does not sign with another team, this will go down as the second-to-last catch of Baldwin’s career. Baldwin was a two-star high school recruit offered just four scholarships. On a college visit to Stanford, he met Richard Sherman, who was still a wide receiver at the time. The two became fast friends, and when the Seahawks drafted Sherman in the fifth round of the 2011 draft, Sherman called Baldwin, who had gone undrafted, and told him Seattle was going to make him an offer and he should accept the deal. Baldwin immediately became Seattle’s steady hand. He started just one time his rookie year, but he appeared in all 16 games and led the Seahawks in targets, receptions, and receiving yards over Golden Tate, Sidney Rice, and Ben Obomanu. In his first seven years, Baldwin played 123 of a possible 125 games, including the playoffs. Baldwin led Seattle in receiving yards in five of his eight seasons, and in 2015 he tied for league lead in receiving touchdowns. He was also a significant voice off the field, serving as an active member of the Players Coalition, and told 60 Minutes Sports that he received death threats for speaking out on police brutality. In May 2014, three years after Sherman convinced Baldwin to sign with Seattle, both players signed life-changing contract extensions. “We talked about it at Stanford,” Baldwin told The Seattle Times. “One of our mottos was ‘Be happy for another man’s success.’ It’s easy in this world, in this business, to get caught up and get jealous of people. But in that moment, because I’ve known him for so long and I’ve known his struggle, I was so happy for him.” Later that year, Sherman famously walked into a press conference with a life-sized cutout of Baldwin, which Baldwin was hiding behind and voicing, as the two discussed Marshawn Lynch’s $100,000 fine for not speaking with reporters. It’s a fitting summary of Baldwin’s career: Sherman was the face of the 2010s Seahawks, while Baldwin was in the background.<doc-sep>Doug Baldwin's time with the Seattle Seahawks -- and potentially his NFL career -- is over. The team announced on Thursday that it has terminated Baldwin's contract as well as that of safety Kam Chancellor, both with failed-physical designations. It was an expected move with Chancellor, who suffered a career-ending neck injury in 2017 and had remained on Seattle's roster since then purely for salary-cap purposes. Baldwin's future was up in the air after the 30-year-old receiver endured an injury-riddled 2018 season. General manager John Schneider confirmed during the draft that Baldwin was contemplating retirement, having just undergone his second surgery of the offseason. In a statement, Schneider called it a "difficult decision" to move on from Baldwin and Chancellor given what both meant to the most successful stretch of football the Seahawks have experienced. "These are two of the most iconic players in franchise history, and both were instrumental in establishing our championship culture, great examples of competitiveness and leadership on the field and in the community," Schneider said. "These legendary players will always be a part of our Seahawks family." Baldwin's remarkable story saw him go from an undrafted free agent in 2011 out of Stanford to one of the most prolific receivers in Seahawks history. His 49 receiving touchdowns are second only to Pro Football Hall of Famer Steve Largent. That included a career-best 14 TDs in 2015, which tied for the league lead and helped Baldwin earn one of his two Pro Bowl nods. He ranks third on the Seahawks' all-time receptions list (493) and third in receiving yards (6,563). Baldwin missed three games in 2018 and was physically compromised throughout the year while dealing with injuries to both knees, his shoulder, elbow and groin. He had surgery early in the offseason on his shoulder and more recently had surgery for a sports hernia. He also had what coach Pete Carroll described as a non-surgical procedure on his knee. Baldwin finished 2018 with 50 catches (his fewest since 2013) for 618 yards (his fewest since 2012) and five touchdowns. He acknowledged late in the year that he was "on the downside" of his career at 30 years old. "It's been hell," he said in November while describing his injury-filled season, during which his streak of 89 consecutive games played was snapped. That had been the fourth-longest streak among active receivers. "I've never had this many injuries before," he continued. "So it's been a journey, that's for sure. But it's been a journey that I've come to appreciate because it's taught me a lot about myself not only as a football player but as a man, and how I handle these challenges." But a source told ESPN after the season that Baldwin's injuries "scared him." "He has been an extraordinary part of this program since we've been here and he has given us everything he has had, been a great competitor, player and all that," Carroll said during the draft, after ESPN's Adam Schefter reported that Baldwin may have played his final down. "We believe in him so much and trust in him so much that wherever this goes, we're going to support him forever. He's been a great contributor in so many ways, not just on the team but in the community and everything else. He's been awesome, so we'll see what happens. He's working through it and we're going to follow Doug on this one." Baldwin's release leaves Tyler Lockett as the Seahawks' clear-cut No. 1 receiver, a role he ascended to last season. They drafted DK Metcalf at the end of the second round and added two more receivers on Day 3: Gary Jennings (fourth round) and John Ursua (seventh). They also signed Terry Wright and Jazz Ferguson as UDFAs, further protecting themselves at receiver with Baldwin's future uncertain. Baldwin had two years and $21 million remaining on his contract. It was scheduled to pay him $9.25 million in 2019 base salary with another $750,000 available in per-game roster bonuses. Assuming the team doesn't use a post-June 1 designation, his release will clear $6,856,250 in 2019 cap space. A post-June-1 release would clear $10 million while pushing half of his $6,287,500 in dead money into 2020. However, Baldwin could potentially be eligible for a $1.2 million injury protection, a collectively-bargained benefit that would count against Seattle's cap. By being released as opposed to retiring while still under contract, Baldwin won't be subject to potential forfeiture of his remaining signing bonus proration. Like Baldwin, Chancellor is a virtual lock to end up in the Seahawks' Ring of Honor. A fifth-round pick out of Virginia Tech in 2010, he was a founding member of the Legion of Boom secondary that played a key role in one of the best stretches of defense in recent NFL history. Chancellor made four Pro Bowls before his career effectively ended on an innocuous-looking tackle midway through the 2017 season. He later specified that his neck injury was spinal stenosis, or a narrowing of the spinal canal, and said he also had bone spurs there. Chancellor had two years remaining on his contract. The Seahawks carried him on PUP last season because releasing him would have caused his 2018 cap number to skyrocket to nearly $20 million. They waited until now, when the cap penalties would no longer be as severe. The team will clear either $2.3 or $4.8 million in 2018 cap space with Chancellor's release, depending on whether they use the post-June-1 designation. Chancellor is still entitled to $5.2 million of his $10 million 2019 base salary because that amount was guaranteed for injury. With Baldwin and Chancellor no longer on the roster, the only remaining Seahawks from their Super Bowl XLVIII victory over the Denver Broncos are quarterback Russell Wilson and linebackers Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright.<doc-sep>The Seattle Seahawks have officially terminated the contracts of safety Kam Chancellor and wide receiver Doug Baldwin. While Seahawks fans have been preparing for the imminent retirement of Chancellor for over a year now, news of Baldwin’s future only came about during the second day of the 2019 NFL draft. Seattle spent the entire 2019 campaign adjusting to life without Chancellor, and the Seahawks will have to go through the same process again with no Baldwin in the mix. The Seahawks may be a run-first team, but make no mistake, this is a major loss for Seattle’s offense. Baldwin has unquestionably been Russell Wilson’s No. 1 receiver throughout the years, developing iron-clad chemistry. Baldwin was almost always on the receiving end of Wilson’s biggest throws, including most recently an impossibly difficult sideline reception on fourth down in Seattle’s playoff game against Dallas. Baldwin’s impact wasn’t solely measured on receptions and touchdowns, as his mere presence forced defenses to focus on him, which opened up opportunities for other receivers. In the few games he missed in 2018, there was a clear drop off in Seattle’s air attack, most notably against the Vikings when Wilson only passed for 72 yards. However, there is perhaps a silver lining. Losing Baldwin will hurt, but it would seem the Seahawks are more prepared for life without him than ever before. Tyler Lockett proved last year he is more than capable of stepping up as a No. 1 receiver. Seattle also drafted a trio of rookie receivers, including draft-standout D.K. Metcalf. The other two receivers, Gary Jennings and John Ursua, will look to fill in for Baldwin in the slot. Seattle still has receivers David Moore and Jaron Brown, who both had flashes of excellence in the red zone last year. Not to mention the return of tight end Will Dissly from injury. The post-Doug Baldwin era begins now. There may be growing pains as the team learns to adjust without him, but the Seahawks may have the pieces in place to succeed offensively.<doc-sep>
Elaine Thompson/Associated Press The Seattle Seahawks released longtime stars Doug Baldwin and Kam Chancellor on Thursday because of failed physicals. Seahawks general manager John Schneider said in a statement: "The Seahawks have made the difficult decision to terminate/failed physical Doug Baldwin and Kam Chancellor. These are two of the most iconic players in franchise history, and both were instrumental in establishing our championship culture, great examples of competitiveness and leadership on the field and in the community. These legendary players will always be a part of our Seahawks family." Chancellor and Baldwin have been a big part of Seattle's extended run of success in recent years. The team has made the playoffs in seven of the last nine seasons, reaching the Super Bowl twice. They helped capture the franchise's first Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl XLVIII. Chancellor, a fifth-round draft pick by the Seahawks in 2010, is a four-time Pro Bowl safety who was a key member of the Legion of Boom. He piled up 641 tackles, 12 interceptions and 44 pass breakups in eight seasons. Chancellor hasn't played since suffering a neck injury in November 2017. He discussed the challenges presented by the injury in July 2018: Video Play Button Videos you might like An undrafted free agent out of Stanford in 2011, Baldwin leaves Seattle as one of the Seahawks' greatest receivers ever. He ranks second in franchise history with 49 receiving touchdowns and third in both receptions (493) and yards (6,563). However, the 30-year-old has spent the early part of this offseason trying to get healthy. He underwent operations on both his shoulder and knee following the 2018 season, and he then had sports hernia surgery in March. Baldwin's health has led him to contemplate retirement this offseason, per the News Tribune's Gregg Bell: Ian Rapoport of NFL Network noted this move could mark the end of the road for the wideout: As ESPN's Bill Barnwell pointed out, these transactions are just the latest in the roster transformation that has taken place in Seattle since its last Super Bowl appearance in February 2015: Stars such as Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas and Marshawn Lynch have moved on in recent years. Chancellor and Baldwin will be remembered as all-time great Seahawks, but unfortunately for them, injuries cut their time in Seattle short.