K.J. Wright had a prove-it year, needing to earn a 2020 season with Seahawks
This time last year, K.J. Wright was shopping.
For a job.
He was 30 years old. That’s the back side of prime for most NFL careers. He missed 11 of 16 games in 2018. His contract with the only NFL team he’d known had expired with Seattle’s 2018 season.
By early 2019 the Seahawks had not offered him a new deal. When free agency started last March, he did not receive any offer he liked. No one wanted the veteran weakside linebacker coming off knee surgery and regenokine, blood-spinning treatment.
So he signed back with the Seahawks. On their terms, not his.
He got a prove-it deal. The contract was officially two years, worth up to $15 million. But only the 2019 season was guaranteed. Wright got a $5 million signing bonus, $1.5 million in guaranteed base pay and another $1.5 million in a roster bonus for this past season. The remaining $7 million of his deal for 2020 was nowhere near guaranteed.
Nothing is in the NFL. Especially for a veteran in his 30s, coming off the fewest games he’d played in a season.
So he signed a fallback contract.
“It’s a one-year deal,” he said last March. “And if the Seahawks decide to move on, then I don’t get the other seven (million).”
Wright had to earn a 2020 season in Seattle.
He just did.
He just finished one of the best seasons in his nine-year career.
“Yeah,” he said in front of his locker at Lambeau Field Jan. 12 after the Seahawk’s season-ending playoff loss in Green Bay.
His laugh revealed he was satisfied with a job well done.
“I can’t lie,” he said. “It was a team effort, and I can’t take all the credit. But coming back the way I did, I’m proud of myself.
“I give myself a pat on the back for that.
“And, so, got to do it again.”
He shared a sack of Aaron Rodgers a week and a half ago in the loss at Green Bay in the NFC divisional playoffs. He had another sack plus key third-down stops the previous week in Seattle’s win at Philadelphia in the wild-card round. In his first 12 playoff games from 2012-18, including Super Bowls for the Seahawks at the end of the 2013 and 2014 seasons, Wright had a half a sack. Total.
Healthy again, he played in every one of the Seahawks’ 18 games this past season. More than ever, coach Pete Carroll and defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. valued keeping Wright and strongside linebacker Mychal Kendricks on the field every down in Seattle’s base 4-3 defense over employing a nickel defensive back they didn’t trust as much for passing downs. The blitzed Wright more than they had in years.
The results were all Wright.
Carroll and his staff rested Wright during training camp and often for mid-week practices between games in the regular season. It worked. He played 997 snaps, the second-highest workload of his career. He showed again he was one of the league’s best at diagnosing plays outside the tackles, especially screen passes to running backs and wide receivers. He had a career-high 132 tackles. He had three interceptions. He got two picks in 10 minutes during the team’s win at Carolina last month.
Wright had two interceptions in nine years before that game.
Yes, Wright proved it in 2019.
Now, instead of entering the offseason not knowing where he and his family might live and play next, Wright is entrenched with the Seahawks again. He, quarterback Russell Wilson and All-Pro middle linebacker Bobby Wagner are the franchise’s cornerstones and returning leaders for next season.
Wright is scheduled to get a $1 million bonus on March 22, four days after the new league year officially begins. If—and by all current signs, when—Wright is on the active 53-man roster for the first game of 2020 in September his $5 million base salary becomes guaranteed for the entire season.
Limbo is long gone.
“I thought he had a terrific season. I thought he had a terrific finish to the season,” Carroll said. “The last two months of the season were his best play of the year. We really worked hard to make sure coming off his stuff from last year, to keep him healthy and keep him strong through the year... He got stronger as the year went on. It just became more impacting, and he made a ton of plays.
“Really great leadership, and good toughness. It really showed up, a lot. I was really fired up for him.”
Wright agrees with Carroll, saying the playoff loss to the Packers in which the Seahawks rallied from 18 points down to being a play away from winning a 28-23 game feels like the way Seattle ended the 2012 season. Those Seahawks rallied from way back in the divisional playoffs at Atlanta to take the lead in the final minute, only to lose to the Falcons on a last-play field goal.
Carroll often cites that playoff rally in defeat by a team that had Wright in his second year and Wilson and Wagner as rookies as the catalyst for the Seahawks’ Super Bowl-championship season in 2013.
Wright agrees with the only coach he’s had since Seattle drafted him in the fourth round in 2011 out of Mississippi State that this feels like 2012 to 2013 again: a core of a few veterans surrounded by hungry, talented young players such as Richard Sherman and Kam Chancellor yet to break into stardom.
When the Packers converted the final two third downs, Aaron Rodgers’ completions against rookie nickel back Ugo Amadi and reserve safety Lano Hill, to end the Seahawks’ frantic comeback and season in Green Bay, Wright spent a long time on Lambeau Field staring. He stared some more in full uniform while everyone else got out of theirs in the locker room 20 or so minutes after the game.
Just as he became part of Seattle’s plans yet again for 2020, Wright realized many others on the defense and Seahawks won’t return next season. The team has 19 players poised to become free agents in March.
That’s just the way it is in the NFL.
“It’s just the older I get the more tough it gets for me,” Wright said. “You know, the team is not going to be the same next year. Guys, they go their separate ways.
“I’m an old softy at heart.
“But, it’s just the nature of the game. Just got to take your punches. And just bounce back.”
This story was originally published January 23, 2020 at 7:26 AM.
