Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said Tuesday that strong safety Kam Chancellor will return this week from the groin injury that has kept him out of the last four games.

Carroll seemed confident in that while discussing Chancellor’s status following Monday night’s game against Buffalo, though he qualified it by saying Chancellor would have to make it through the week of practice. He seemed even more sure during his visit with “Brock and Salk” on Tuesday that Seattle will have Chancellor available for Sunday night’s game at New England.

“Yeah, he’s really ready to go,” Carroll said.

Carroll reiterated that running back Thomas Rawls is still another week away, at least. Rawls has been running and will practice this week for the first time since cracking a bone in his fibula in Week 2. Carroll said he hasn’t suffered a setback in his recovery and that this was the general time frame the team had eyed all along.

“I’ve seen him run in his workouts and he runs great, he looks great, so he should be able to go,” Carroll said, referring to Rawls’ return to practice. “This is going to be somewhat of a limited week anyway, so it’s not a great week for him to bounce back in that regard because we’d love to extend him. But he’s ready to go in that regard and then we’ll see what happens next week.”

Tight end Luke Willson and left tackle Bradley Sowell have a chance to return this week, Carroll said. Both players are recovering from knee injuries. Willson is almost three weeks removed from arthroscopic surgery while Sowell sprained his MCL two weeks ago.

Asked if Sowell will reclaim his starting job from George Fant if he returns this week, Carroll said that’s undetermined. Fant, an undrafted rookie whose only season of college football was as a tight end, made his second straight start Monday night. He was called for clipping, which was one of the four penalties he committed last week against New Orleans.

Carroll had a fairly tepid assessment of the way Fant played Monday night, though he said he held his own against linebacker Lorenzo Alexander, who entered Week 9 as the NFL’s leader in sacks with nine.

“He did OK, but unfortunately there was a couple rookie mistakes that happened again,” Carroll said. “Same thing that happened last week, he did again, which I would liked to have seen that go away, a big 15-yard penalty that was kind of careless. It was exactly the same thing that happened a week ago. So we’ve got to make sure that he’s making progress, but he did work really well against a very effective player. This guy’s having a good year and he handled him pretty well for the most part. He certainly got better and improved.”

Carroll said cornerback DeAndre Elliott will be back this week as well. He missed Monday night’s game due to a hamstring injury.