By Gregg Bell
The News Tribune
The NFL has announced official dates for the Seahawks’ and every other team’s offseason workouts, organized team activities and minicamps.
Will Frank Clark be at Seattle’s?
The Seahawks’ official—and voluntary—offseason conditioning workouts at team headquarters for strength, conditioning and physical rehabilitation begin April 15, as coach Pete Carroll had detailed the last couple months.
After two weeks, the Seahawks will enter a second phase of work: three weeks of individual-player and team drills. Those prohibit hitting and team offense versus team defense scrimmaging.
Seattle’s OTAs—on-field, no-pads practices that prohibit hitting and team offense versus team defense drills—are May 20, 21 and 23, May 28, 29 and 31, and June 3-6. Teams are allowed to do 7 on 7, 9 on 9 and 11 on 11 team drills during OTAs.
The one mandatory event of the Seahawks’ offseason is the veteran minicamp June 11-13. That ends the third and final phase of the NFL’s offseason work.
The Seahawks kept Clark from entering free agency last month by using their franchise tag on the 25-year-old defensive end. That mandates him to $17,128,000 guaranteed to play for Seattle in 2019. Clark, who had a career-high 14 sacks in 17 games including the playoffs last season, has not signed the tender for the one-year tag offer. The Seahawks have until July 15 to reach an agreement on a multiyear extension with him. After that date, the two sides are not allowed to reach a longer-term deal until after the end of the 2019 regular season.
NFL Network reported last month that—despite Clark saying he wants to and thinks he will remain with Seattle, plus Carroll saying “Frankie, he’s a Seahawk”—Clark will not sign the franchise-tag tender nor report to offseason workouts or any Seahawks event unless the team gives him the longer-term money he is seeking.
That NFL Network report cited league sources, and assuredly came from Clark’s side as a reminder he wants more than a one-year franchise tag.
As long as Clark hasn’t signed his tender for the tag, he is not under contract. So the Seahawks cannot fine him if he does not attend even the mandatory minicamp in June.
The Seahawks are used to veteran players skipping offseason workouts. Star running back Marshawn Lynch and Pro Bowl defensive end Michael Bennett routinely blew them off when they played for the team through the 2015 and ‘17 seasons; they showed up only when the team could have fined them for not attending. Last spring and summer Earl Thomas stayed away in what became a contract holdout the All-Pro safety ended days before the season opener in early September.
All were playing for the team when the games, and the money, counted.
