Hall of Fame-bound Bobby Wagner plays to lead Seahawks defense. He lives to make Mom proud
Bobby Wagner knows Mom is watching.
She always has.
“I think she’ll be proud of me,” the Seahawks’ All-Pro linebacker said.
Eleven years ago, following Wagner’s freshman year at Utah State and before he became a Super Bowl champion and best middle linebacker of this era, his mother and biggest fan died.
Phenia Wagner had a heart attack, months after she had had a stroke. She was 47.
“The biggest thing I think she’d be proud of is the man that I am off the field, more so on the field,” Wagner said Wednesday. “She’s always been like my big supporter.
“She’s always the loudest person at the games. She was always the one that I had to look at — as a son, you look into the stands and you kind of like had to tell her, ‘Can you sit down a little bit?’ She was always that person.”
Wagner says Mom would have been that way this COVID-19 NFL season, too. She’d be at home, yelling at her television — because she and every other fan aren’t allowed to attend Seahawks games during the pandemic.
“Even without the fans, I probably would have been able to hear her through the screen,” Wagner said.
“The biggest thing that I think she would be, I guess, most proud of is the humility, is the consistency. Being the same person that I have always been.
“I’ve grown as a person. But what I do off the field, I think she’d be most proud of.”
Humility.
That showed again Monday night minutes after the 8-3 Seahawks finished their latest victory, 23-16 at the Philadelphia Eagles.
Amid roaring, celebratory chants of “Hey! Hey!” echoing off the walls of the visitors’ locker room at Lincoln Financial Field, Russell Wilson turned to his locker neighbor.
“You’re over 100, aren’t you?” Wilson asked.
Wagner simply nodded. He almost whispered, way below the rest of their teammates’ roars.
“Yeah,” Wagner told his co-captain, almost sheepishly.
“Yeah.”
The NFL and the tens of millions of people watching it know Wagner for being the highest-paid middle linebacker in league history. For being a Super Bowl champion, a five-time All-Pro, a six-time Pro Bowl selection. And for now, after the Eagles game, having more than 100 tackles in a season for a ninth consecutive year.
How remarkable is that? With 101 tackles through 11 games, Wagner is just the third NFL player in the last 20 years with at least 100 tackles in nine consecutive seasons.
London Fletcher had 100 for 14 straight seasons from 2000-13 for the Rams, Bills and Washington. Keith Brooking had 100 tackles in nine consecutive years, 2001-09 for the Falcons and Cowboys.
Wagner is the only one of that elite trio to spend his entire career with the same team.
Consistency.
But his mother knew Wagner for so much more.
She raised him to become a worldly, motivated visionary. That’s why Entrepreneur magazine this week features Wagner, for becoming a co-founder of Seattle tech startup Fuse Venture Partners VC.
His mother raised him to be the man that became the Seahawks’ 2019 nominee for the NFL’s Walter Payton Man of the Year.
She raised him to do what her son did days before Thanksgiving in 2019.
Wagner went to a Safeway in West Seattle one afternoon. He spontaneously bought all the groceries for everybody in the store.
For more than a half hour.
“I was packing bags with Thanksgiving food for the tiny homes that I kind of helped out early in the year,” Wagner said of the Low Income Housing Institute’s project to house the homeless he partnered with in the summer of 2019.
“While we were waiting, I saw everybody Thanksgiving shopping. So I thought it would be cool that when they went to the cash register they wouldn’t have to pay.
“And so, you know, I kind of secretly tried to say that I was paying for it, their meals.”
To a cornerstone
As the Seahawks transitioned from the aged, injured and unhappy “Legion of Boom” secondary and let Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Michael Bennett and other leaders of their Super Bowl-winning defense leave the last few years, they cast their lot with Wilson and Wagner.
Wagner remembers that Super Bowl era from which Seattle transitioned. And not for all the reasons you do.
He still remembers as if it was his first time calling a play in the defensive huddle, as a rookie second-round draft choice in 2012. Sherman, Thomas, legendary safety Kam Chancellor and defensive lineman Chris Clemons just stared back at Wagner. And yapped.
“They didn’t even know what I was saying,” Wagner said.
“They just starting talking about I had no neck.
“So, I knew what I was up against in that group.”
He passed that test.
Wagner has passed pretty much every one in his career.
“I think he’s going to be gold-jacket guy down the line,” said Jarran Reed, who plays in front of Wagner at tackle on the Seahawks’ defensive line.
“Great person. Great player.
“I’m just real fortunate to be playing with a guy like that.”
In 2019 ccoach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider, with the approval of team chair Jody Allen, made Wilson and Wagner, draft classmates picked by Seattle one round apart in 2012, the highest-paid players in league history at their positions.
They are bonded beyond football, too.
Following Monday night’s win in Philadelphia, Wilson took a question about Wagner extending his streak of 100 tackles to nine straight seasons and turned it into a testimonial why anybody looking for a role model in pro football should begin and end their search with Seattle’s indispensable number 54.
“It’s just amazing how far he’s come and all of the things that he has done. He’s been such a great leader since day one,” said Wilson, himself one of the NFL’s most philanthropic players.
“He’s a Hall-of-Fame football player. He’s a Hall-of-Fame friend.
“He’s as good as it gets. He demonstrates his character in what he does for the community and for this team. I know he loves his daughter (Quinncy). It’s just who he is as a person. He is a special guy. I think he’s a great dad and a great person.
“If there is any kid out there who is watching somebody and wants to be like somebody, I think it’s a guy like Bobby Wagner.”
“He’s got a good heart. He works hard for everything and treats people the right way in all circumstances,” Wilson said. “His faith is big.
“I’m just glad that I get to call him a friend and teammate. When we get to wear those captain patches and walk out on the field, going through the season, we’re grateful. Me and him are both very, very grateful for all of the hard work and the things we’ve done so far.
“We feel like we’re just getting started.”
Money well spent
They Seahawks have spent a combined $194 million ($140 million on Wilson’s new deal in the spring of 2019, $54 million on Wagner’s a couple months later). The two of them take up about a quarter of Seattle’s salary-cap space for the entire 53-man active roster for 2020.
And it’s a bargain.
Wilson threw his league-leading 31st touchdown pass Monday night in the win over Philadelphia. He’s the winningest quarterback in NFL history over the first nine years of a career. A win Sunday over the New York Giants at Seattle’s Lumen Field will make Wilson the first QB to have a winning record in nine straight seasons to begin an NFL career.
Wagner and Tampa Bay’s Lavante Davis are the only NFL players with more than 1,000 tackles since 2012. Since 2016, Wagner has 35 games with 10 or more stops, by far the most in the league. Second is Blake Martinez (28), whom Wagner will oppose Sunday against the Giants.
Wagner’s blitzing more this season, as Seattle’s defense spent the first two months of the season needing to help a recently surging defensive line in pressuring. He was 30 yards down the field defending Arizona wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald at the goal line on the final defensive stand that sealed the Seahawks’ win over the Cardinals two games ago.
Monday night, Wagner ran 40 yards downfield in stride with Eagles tight end Dallas Goedert, the raised his arms to break up a long pass.
“I’m glad you brought that up, because it isn’t just the tackles that he makes. He’s a marvelous athlete, just an all-around athlete, coordination-wise and timing and feel and all of that,” Carroll said. “And it takes all of those faculties to make choices in that kind of space and that kind of speed and that kind of depth and all to come through. And he just has all that.
“He’s a Hall of Famer,” Carroll said. “He is exactly what you would hope to write up as almost the definition for the position.
“We hoped that he would come through and be an all-timer, and we couldn’t have predicted that, but we had hoped. And he surpassed our expectations with his consistency, which all is based on his character.
“It’s the person that he is. He’s just got his act together in the world, And it shows up in his play.”
For Mom
Mom would be proud of one more way Wagner has remembered and honored her throughout his career.
He’s cherished and restored her prized, 2008 Lexus. She gave him her car in their home of Ontario, California, not long before she passed.
“I just fixed it up, probably a week ago,” Wagner said, proudly. “Just got it back. Repainted. New rims. New interior. Everything’s working smooth.
“As long as I’m alive, that car will be alive.”
This story was originally published December 3, 2020 at 6:50 AM.
