Cost rising for Seahawks on new deal for Frank Clark after his latest huge game

Frank Clark has a simple goal.

It sure looked like he was cashing in it again when he ransacked the overwhelmed Oakland Raiders Sunday night.

“I just want to show people that I am one of the best. Period,” Seattle’s only proven, returning pass rusher said.

That was moments after Clark dominated the Raiders’ fill-in offensive line and repeatedly crashed into quarterback Derek Carr from his defensive-end spot. Clark was a mammoth reason Oakland gained just 185 yards in the Seahawks’ 27-3 rout at rockin’ Wembley Stadium.

Another Sunday. Another illness. Another huge game by Clark.

He had 2 1/2 sacks Sunday night. On the two he owned himself, he twice knocked the ball out of Carr’s hands for fumbles that the Seahawks recovered deep in Oakland’s end. Seattle converted Carr’s clangers Clark created into 10 points.

He and the Seahawks could have stopped there, and they still would have won. But Clark also had three other hits on Carr, plus a team high-tying four sacks by halftime.

“I feel like, just watching film, I saw a weakness there,” Clark said of the Raiders. “I saw them starting two rookie tackles.”

Because of injuries Oakland was once again starting Kolton Miller at left tackle and Brandon Parker on the right. Clark took turns victimizing each one.

He was an equal-opportunity destroyer.

“Two and a half sacks, two forced fumbles that we recovered, and that’s enormous,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said.

“And he got sick in the second half. He couldn’t get back out there. He’d have gotten more.

“He was really playing. So really pleased with the whole day and the whole event of this week being here.”

Clark has 12 sacks in his past 15 games dating to week eight of last season. He’s played through what he says were broken hands last year, then wrist surgery this offseason then Sunday’s illness. He has 24 1/2 sacks in his past 36 games.

Last week in the loss to the Los Angeles Rams he had an interception, two tackles, one for a loss, plus a hit and forced fumble on quarterback Jared Goff. That was less than two days after he was hospitalized with a three-day fight with food poisoning.

Imagine what may happen when he’s fully healthy.

Imagine how much more his contract extension is costing each passing week.

This is the final year of Clark’s rookie contract, the one he signed as Seattle’s controversial top pick in 2015. He was months removed from Michigan kicking him out of its college program for a domestic-violence arrest and brief jailing in Ohio.

Three years later, as his ransacking of Carr on Sunday showed, the Seahawks’ defense absolutely needs him beyond 2018. He remains the only proven sack man on a defense that is without traded Michael Bennett and fellow Pro Bowl end Cliff Avril, who had to retire this spring because of a neck injury.

In this passer-or-sack-the-passer league, edge rushers are a premier and thus expensive commodity. Plus, Clark is just 25 years old. That’s why you can almost hear the cash register ring each time Clark gets another sack.

His base salary is $943,941. Add a zero to the end of that, and that’s the ballpark of what Clark may command per year in his next deal.

It’s increasingly likely that deal will come from Seattle. Thing is, it’s costing the Seahawks more by the week.

Carroll sees Clark as different, more mature than even last year. And Clark indeed needed to grow up still after his spring and summer of 2017. The Seahawks had to issue statements that they were “disappointed” in Clark in May 2017 when he posted on his social-media account a female reporter who had written about his domestic-violence case could have a job “cleaning my fish tank.” Three months later Clark sucker-punched teammate Germain Ifedi in a training camp fight.

In February, Clark lost his father and three other family members in a house fire in Cleveland, where he went to high school. Since then, he’s had a noticeably wider-world view of his job and his life.

He said last week “I can go through anything in life, and it’s not going to challenge me like that challenged me.”

That was after that loss to the unbeaten Rams. Clark put the two-point defeat and his food poisoning in proper perspective by saying he’s been through more difficult times in the last eight months.

“At the end of the day, none of that matters, man. I look at my boys, I look at the people I have lost in my past, losing my father — I lost my father in a fire. Nothing I go through is going to be harder than that,” he said.

Carroll knows the meter keeps running on the Seahawks’ tab for Clark.

“Frank’s been playing great football,” Carroll said. “He’s been on it, really aggressive and on the attack.

“More importantly, I think I probably said this to you a little while ago, he’s just turned his outlook in a really, really positive way, and he’s playing as a great teammate. He’s so strong and so supportive with his message. His effort daily, every single day that he practices out there is great.”

In fact, Carroll sees some of Bennett, Avril, even Red Bryant before them as the defensive linemen teammates admire and respect in the locker room and huddle.



“He’s taken a leadership role, really reminiscent of some of the guys that were here before. So almost like he’s picked up the mantle and made a statement about that,” Carroll said. “By the way, it works.

“Not so much about what he says, it’s about the way he works. His message is good too, though. So Frankie’s doing great, and I’m really fired up about him.”

That’s the kind of talk that will get Clark a raise.

How much of one depends on when the Seahawks get the deal done.

This story was originally published October 14, 2018 at 5:58 PM.