Man of the Year. Pro Bowl. Now Seahawks Bobby Wagner named All-Pro for 5th time in 8 years
Bobby Wagner is more than the Seahawks’ Walter Payton Man of the Year for all the community service and help for the needy does off the field.
On the field, the man in the middle of the Seahawks’ defense is the best at his position in the NFL. Yet again.
The Associated Press announced Friday morning Wagner is a first-team All-Pro for the fifth time in his eight years in the league.
Russell Wilson was second-team All-Pro, behind Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson.
Wagner led the NFL again in tackles with 159 in the just-completed regular season. It was the second-most tackles in franchise history, behind his own record of 167. It’s the second time in four years he’s led the NFL in stops.
The AP’s nationwide panel of voters who regularly cover the league recognized the league’s highest-paid middle linebacker (with a new $54 million contract this summer) is also still the best one at age 29.
Last month he was selected for his sixth Pro Bowl.
“As you get older you kind of understand how hard these things are to get. And so you don’t take any of them for granted and are very grateful for your health, grateful for your teammates,” Wagner told the AP’s Tim Booth. “As you get older you reflect and you appreciate things differently that you might not have had when you were young.
“The first one, you don’t really know. I feel like growing up as a kid you watched the Pro Bowl. You were excited about the Pro Bowl. I didn’t understand All-Pro until you got here. When you got here and people start talking about All-Pro and that’s the best of the best, you’re like ‘Pro Bowl is cool, but I need to get the best of the best.’
“When you get it the first time or you watch guys like (Richard Sherman) or those guys get it and you get it yourself you’re excited. As you get older you see guys that should have been All-Pro and realize how hard it is to get those things and never take when you get them for granted and grateful for it.”
Yet Wagner still feels unfulfilled from his 2019 season.
His 159 tackles were eight short of that career-high he set in 2016.
“It’s pretty cool to lead the league in tackles,” Wagner said Wednesday. “D-Line keeping me clean, coaches drawing up a great game plan, and my legs for running. It’s pretty cool. You see the guys that have done it before like Ray Lewis, and all those guys. It’s a cool accomplishment that you think of when the season is over.
“Yeah. I always try to see if I can get more tackles than I had the previous year; 168 has been pretty tough to get.”
And his Seahawks aren’t done yet. Seattle (11-5), the conference’s fifth seed, plays the fourth-seeded Eagles (9-7) on Sunday in Philadelphia in the wild-card round of the NFC playoffs.
Just like he has for eight seasons, six previous postseasons and in two Super Bowls, Wagner will keep Sunday’s playoff game like he seeks to keep all his starts: simple.
The Seahawks’ second-round draft choice in 2012 from Utah State, one round ahead of when Seattle drafted Russell Wilson that year, says keeping it simple is how he’s become such a sure and prodigious tackler. He’s the only player in Seahawks’ history with 1,000 tackles. This was his eighth consecutive season with at least 100 tackles, another franchise record.
“To me, it’s always been extremely important (to keep it simple) because you have so many amazing offensive coordinators in this league that come up with all these different motions and tendencies and things that you can be distracted by with your eyes,” Wagner said. “At the end of the day, the game of football is really as simple as you finding the ball and tackling it. That’s how I try to simplify the game. You try to learn as much of their tendencies as much as you possibly can to have them in your memory bank.
“At the end of the day it’s the same game. You know how to get a person down. There’s a bunch of different techniques to get a guy down, but as long as that guy gets down on the ground before the first down or the goal line, I’m always pretty satisfied.”
Asked if he has a favorite technique to use to tackle a ball carrier, Wagner smiled.
“Yeah,” the now five-time All-Pro said, “the get-them-down technique.
“That’s my favorite one.”
This story was originally published January 3, 2020 at 9:18 AM.
