The Seahawks have moved players before. Red Bryant moved from DT to DE. Several of the Seahawks players played different positions before settling into their current roles. Clemons was a LB. JR Sweezy was a DT in college. Irvin was a safety in high school and early on at college. Evan Moore was a WR. Richard Sherman was a WR. Golden Tate was a RB in high school. Our pro-bowl fullback was a Heisman nominated QB in college... etc.
Now, I get that none of those players were pro-bowlers at their positions before being moved (although Clemons (in Oakland) was close). But I think a lot of the snark in this thread regarding Chancellor's options reflects not only ignorance of this regime's philosophy and values (always looking to get better at every position, valuing players that can play multiple positions, etc), but that mindset also displays an ironic closemindedness, the exact opposite of the kind of thinking that put the Seahawks on the map in the first place.
Of course, people like to cite the JS quote about not moving pro-bowlers, while forgetting that he said that during the peak of lying season. I thought he was bullshitting then to cover his ass (like any GM would), and to his credit he may as well have admitted as much after the draft when he confessed that safety Mark Barron was a top target at #12.
As far as Chancellor himself, the status quo is acceptable, but we'd be kidding ourselves if we thought there wasn't room for optimizing. Chancellor the "8 in the box enforcer" is a badass. Chancellor the deep safety coverage helper, not so much. Seattle likes to show different looks on defense and sometimes that means Earl and Kam switch jobs for a play. In a true Tampa 2 defense, the safeties are supposed to be interchangeable. Remember when Sherman got "burned" by Roddy White in the playoffs for a long TD? That wasn't on Sherman, that was on Chancellor for having limited ability as a coverage helper. He basically has the coverage ability of a fast linebacker.
Chancellor is already a very good linebacker who lines up at safety. If Seattle felt they could find another safety that was interchangeable with Earl Thomas (as Mark Barron was), then that player is a high priority (Jeron Johnson isn't that guy, lol). Then the question of what to do with Chancellor comes up. He'd make an outstanding outside linebacker, and would be a huge upgrade over Jeron Johnson as the big nickle safety.
That doesn't mean that Chancellor's move is imminent. It just means that it's one of the options that's on the table if the right situation arises (like Mark Barron last year). Whatever our coach does, it will be to make this defense even better. I suspect we'll see the team draft a LB instead of another safety simply because good linebackers are far more common than Earl Thomas type safeties. In the case of Barron, they were preparing for a scenario where they'd have access to a very rare type of player, and in that scenario moving Chancellor was a no brainer. I'm not really expecting that scenario to come up again any time soon.
