Seahawks legend Kam Chancellor was nominated this week for the NFL Hall of Fame. While some say he doesn’t have the numbers, he absolutely deserves the honor in his first year of eligibility.
It didn’t take long for the NFL Hall of Fame to knock on Kam Chancellor‘s door. Just five years after he last crushed a Seahawks opponent to the turf, number 31 has been nominated to join the Hall.
Oh, for the record, Kam’s last tackle was on the Cardinals Andre Ellington. Kinda sad for a game that had Larry Fitzgerald and Adrian Peterson, right? But not as sad as seeing Chancellor done for not just the season, but his career.
The biggest question for Kam Chancellor entering the HOF isn’t the level of his play. The question is if he made enough of those plays to get into the Hall. But as the always brilliant Bob Condotta points out in his article for The Seattle Times, the gatekeepers of eternal fame have been looking more at the quality of play than just the quantity. And that is very good news for Mr. Chancellor and his legion of fans.
Kam Chancellor crushed the competition on his way to the HOF
Speaking of legions – okay, that was a bit of a cumbersome segue, but it’s all I got – Kam Chancellor is the first member of the Legion of Boom with a realistic chance at getting a bust in Canton Ohio. I’m not knocking Brandon Browner, Byron Maxwell, or DeShawn Shead, but they didn’t have the same impact on the Seahawks as the other two members of the LOB core. Earl Thomas last played in 2019, while Richard Sherman only hung up his cleats last season.
If you compare Chancellor’s awards to those of his teammates, Kam comes out slightly behind. He was named to the Pro Bowl just four times. Thomas got the nod seven times, along with three All-Pro awards. Sherman saw the Pro Bowl five times, with three All-Pro awards. All that tells me is that the media missed on Chancellor, a lot.
I’ll point out that Sherman was named a first-team All-Pro in his second season, but didn’t make the Pro Bowl. That makes as much sense as Chancellor’s multiple snubs. At least he made the second team for All-Pro honors three times. But all that doesn’t mean he doesn’t belong in the Hall.
Comparing Kam Chancellor to current HOF safeties
Let’s play a little game, 12s. I’m going to show you the stats per 16-game season for two Hall of Fame safeties and Kam Chancellor. See if you can figure out which line belongs to our guy.
Player Tackles Solo Asst TFL Int FF FR
A 59.4 49.1 10.3 3.1 5.9 1.0 1.2
B 89.1 61.8 27.3 2.5 1.8 1.3 .4
C 113.8 85.7 28.1 – 2.3 .6 .8
D 97.0 65.9 31.1 – 5.3 1.3 1.4
Player A is Ravens star Ed Reed, while Player B is our man, Kam Chancellor. C is Broncos safety Steve Atwater, and D is the 49ers Ronnie Lott. All stats can be found on my favorite site for stats, pro-football-reference.com. As I’m sure you know, all but Chancellor are in the Hall of Fame. Reed and Lott were inducted in their first year of eligibility, while Atwater waited five extra years. No, I have no idea why that happened, either.
A few notes on those stats before we move on. I had to estimate the solo and assist breakdowns for Lott and Atwater, as complete data isn’t available for either player. The league’s own site only has the last two seasons available for Ronnie Lott, so I used the ratio of those two years to extrapolate from his combined tackles. We have six years of data from Atwater’s 11-year career, so I used the same process there. Tackles for a loss are just that, lost.
So you can place Chancellor behind Atwater in tackles but well ahead of Reed. He falls well behind Reed in interceptions, but then, so does almost everybody. Reed and Lott are sixth and seventh all-time in league history. And that brings us to the crux of the issue. You can’t really compare Chancellor to those guys. They really weren’t playing the same position.
Kam Chancellor would be one of a few pure strong safeties
The key factor to keep in mind here is that of those four players, only Chancellor was a pure strong safety. Lott played five seasons at cornerback, then moved to free safety. He only had two seasons as a strong safety.
Except for one season, Atwater played his entire career as a free safety. Reed comes closest to Chancellor in the position, as he played his first four seasons at strong safety before he moved to free safety. Clearly, the bulk of their awards came at positions other than Kam Chancellor’s.
There are currently 36 defensive backs in the NFL Hall of Fame. Just 16 of those are safeties. Of those, only five players played 90 percent of their snaps as strong safeties. That roster consists of Leroy Butler, Seahawks great Kenny Easley, Ken Houston, Donnie Shell, and Troy Polamalu. I’d run the stats for Easley, Houston, and Shell, but the NFL didn’t bother to keep such minor records as tackles. Seriously, how crazy is that? As for Butler and Polamalu, here are their numbers, along with Chancellor’s.
Tackles Total Solo Asst TFL Int FF FR
Butler 78.6 57.9 20.7 – 3.4 1.1 .9
Polamalu 79.0 59.0 20.3 5.7 3.2 1.4 .7
Chancellor 89.1 61.8 27.3 2.5 1.8 1.3 .4
Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t the primary job of a strong safety to make as many tackles as possible? They defend the run and the pass. With teammates like Earl Thomas and Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor didn’t have to worry about coverage as much as many of his contemporaries. And with Bam Bam patrolling the Seahawks secondary, the Legion of Boom was free to focus on shutting down the pass. I mean, where do you think the Legion of Boom got its name, anyway?
When you get around to matching up Kam Chancellor to truly comparable players, there simply aren’t that many of them. And after all, isn’t that what the Hall of Fame is supposed to be about, honoring the incomparable? Kam Chancellor was as unique a player as he is a man. Much of what he brought to the Seahawks didn’t show up in the record books. But he did more than enough to belong in the NFL Hall of Fame.