Bob Condotta

The Seattle Times

When Seahawks defensive end Frank Clark stayed away from the voluntary portion of the team’s offseason program in the spring, the easy conclusion was that he did so to make a statement about his contract.

Like a few other high-profile players on the team (Earl Thomas, K.J. Wright, Duane Brown, Tyler Lockett), Clark is entering the final year of his contract and acknowledges he’d like an extension sooner rather than later.

And for Clark, it would be a life-changing one.

Clark is finishing up a four-year rookie deal that is worth a total of $3.7 million.

Having established himself as one of the more-promising young pass rushers in the NFL — the 25-year-old has 22 sacks in the last three seasons and 19 in the past two — Clark could be in line for a contract paying him upward of $14 million a year, given the current market for his position.

And his value to the Seahawks would seem as if it has only grown over the last year with the departures of veterans Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril and uncertainty all along the defensive line.

When Clark skipped OTAs, coach Pete Carroll said his contract situation was a factor.

In his first comments to the media since then, though, Clark said in an interview with The Seattle Times Thursday it wasn’t quite that simple.

Instead, Clark said there were a number of factors why he stayed away for much of the spring before returning for the team’s mandatory minicamp.

His father was among four family members killed in a fire in Cleveland in January and Clark said he needed time to heal and help the remainder of his family deal with the tragedy.

He also was recovering from several injuries, including a hamstring issue and broken bones in each hand.

Carroll mentioned the hamstring in June, when Clark was limited in minicamp. He didn’t mention the hands.

Clark revealed on Thursday that he had surgery on his right hand about a month ago to repair an injury that dated to training camp a year ago. He also broke a bone in his left hand in the second preseason game against Minnesota, he said, which lingered all season. That, he said, healed on its own.

“I was going through so many things mentally and emotionally,” Clark said of missing OTAs. “Going through injuries, going through stuff with my family. It was kind of a time where I was talking to my coaches and they understood fully what I was going through. I wanted to get back 100 percent (physically) and they understood. They understood my family situation and where my mind was at. I didn’t make that a secret. I let them know. I voiced how it was and they helped me from that point on.”

Not that Clark isn’t eager for a contract extension.

“Do I want a new one? Yes,” Clark told The Seattle Times. “But at the end of the day, I can’t control that. I can only control being here for my boys and especially the defensive line group.”

Asked if he’s talked to the team about his contract, Clark smiled and said “of course. But I’m not going to disclose too much. But the thing that we have talked about is just the expectations of me as far as my play for the season. So at the end of the day, I know if I do my job on the field, whether it’s here or anywhere else, it’s going to happen. I’ve just got to do my job, and that’s my main focus.”

So how it will unfold?

Clark, told his above comment makes it sound as if the team might be willing to wait until the end of the season to make him the kind of offer he wants, said he has no idea.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen in this game. I watched a lot of stuff happen this past season, you know what I’m saying? I didn’t know I was going to be coming here and six of (the team’s) top players would be gone.”

Clark, though, feels he has shown the Seahawks enough in his three years in Seattle to warrant staying around.

He was drafted in the second round in 2015 amid controversy, having been kicked off the team at Michigan his final year after being arrested for domestic violence, eventually pleading guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct.

The Seahawks cited the path Clark had taken to get to Michigan in the first place — he had little contact with his father for much of his youth and his mother battled drug addiction, leaving him homeless for a while — as evidence that he could be trusted to avoid future issues in the NFL with a little maturity and a strong guiding hand.

Clark largely has — though he apologized for an insensitive tweet to a female reporter in the spring of 2017 and also apologized to his teammates in camp in 2017 after a well-publicized fight with offensive lineman Germain Ifedi — impressing the team by playing through a number of nagging injuries to miss only two games in his first three seasons.

“I feel like I started off my career kind of rough,” he said. “Came in kind of on the rough side and I feel like I am finally bringing everything together full circle and I’m starting to understand everything more.”

Clark didn’t miss a game last season despite the hand injuries as well as a hamstring that crept up in the third game against Tennessee and lingered for a while. Clark said a workout plan that included a steady diet of running up hills this summer has the hamstring now at 100 percent.

And he said he’s eager to show what he can do with two healthy hands — he said he expects to be 100 percent in a week or two with the surgery coming in the summer only after he said further tests revealed there was still damage that needed to be fixed.

“It wasn’t easy at all,” Clark said of last season. “I mean, when you can’t grab. I missed sacks, man. I missed a sack against Indianapolis (in week four) because I couldn’t grab.”

And, he said, the loss of his father — as well as a recent lost of a grandfather — also has him viewing a return of another football season in a somewhat different light.

“Honestly man, football and being around my teammates has helped me a lot,” he said. “I feel like that’s my natural therapy. I’ve been using this as an outlet for everything I’ve been going through my whole life. I’ve been homeless, man. I’ve been shot at. My house has been shot at. I lost my grandfather and my father within a year. At the end of the day, things happen in life you can’t control. You keep on pushing.”