Bobby Wagner ponders his, 5-10 Seahawks’ futures: ‘Obviously there’s going to be changes’
Out of the playoffs for only the second time in his 10 years, Bobby Wagner is spending these holidays a tad more reflective.
Certainly more reflective than he’d be if he was in his usual place entering New Year’s: preparing to lead his Seahawks back into the playoffs.
Instead, the 31-year-old All-Pro middle linebacker and NFL leader in tackles yet again is playing out the string of a lost, 5-10 season with Seattle.
“This year would probably be the year that I reflect a little bit, only because when I got into the league I wanted to — I was just trying to figure out what goals I could set for myself,” he said Wednesday.
“When I got here everybody was saying that players only lasted three years, so I was trying to get to at least five. And I said once I get to five, I want to see if I could get to 10.
“This will be that year, 10. So I will probably think about just how those 10 years have gone.”
Better than this one.
Last weekend in the Seahawks’ latest loss, at home to the Chicago Bears, Wagner re-set his own team record for tackles in a season. He has a league-leading 170 tackles in year 10 of his career, with two games remaining: against Detroit (2-12-1) Sunday at Lumen Field and at Arizona (10-5) Jan. 9.
“As far as me seeing myself stopping playing or stuff like that, I don’t see myself stopping playing,” he said. “I feel like I’ve got a lot of room to grow as a player, to grow as a leader. I feel there is as lot of new technology that is going to let me play a little bit longer, so I am excited to dive into those stuff.
“We’ll see how it works out.”
This is Seattle’s first losing season since 2011. That was months before the team drafted Wagner and quarterback Russell Wilson. Wagner has one season after this one remaining on the $54 million, three-year contract extension he negotiated with the team, without an agent.
The pure dollars of the matter: Wagner’s scheduled charge against the Seahawks’ 2022 salary cap is $20.35 million. Only Wilson’s, at $37 million, is higher among the players under contract for next year. The Seahawks could save $16.6 million against the 2022 salary cap if they released Wagner before June 1 — though that of course would mean they won’t have Bobby Wagner in the middle of their defense anymore.
Given all the losing this season and his high cost next year, Wagner was asked Wednesday: Do you wonder at all whether next season you will be playing for the Seahawks?
“You think about it. You think about what the next year looks like and just, period, what the future holds,” Wagner said, “because this was a season I don’t think we all planned for. We didn’t plan for the season to go this way, so, obviously, there’s going to be some changes.
“Whether or not I’m a part of those changes, I don’t know.”
Wagner got his usual Pro Bowl selection and tackle numbers. But opponents such as the Rams twice (including last week) and the Titans and Vikings in September have produced big plays while specifically targeting him over the middle with passes. Backs as receivers have at times run away from Wagner in the open field.
To be sure, there are no heirs in place ready to do anything close to what Wagner has done for the last decade in the middle of Seattle’s defense.
The team drafted Ben Burr-Kirven from the University of Washington in the fifth round in 2019. The middle linebacker has been on injured reserve all season after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee in an August preseason game. He’s been a special-teams player so far in his Seahawks and NFL career. He’s played just 14 snaps on defense in two seasons.
Undrafted rookie Jon Rhattigan is a middle linebacker. He’s played on special teams; he hasn’t played a single snap for Wagner on defense this season. Rhattigan missed last weekend’s game with a sprained knee.
And that’s it behind Wagner on the roster, and horizon.
A contract restructure?
Perhaps more likely than cutting their co-captain and franchise cornerstone along with Wilson, coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider may ask Wagner to restructure the final year of his deal. That would save cap space Seattle could then use to seek improvements the 5-10 team needs. In the last year or so, the Seahawks have used a new-for-them tack to create better salary-cap numbers for expensive contracts: void years added to the end of expiring contracts in exchange for veteran players getting more immediate guaranteed money up front.
The need for Wagner to restructure his contract may not prove to be all that pressing. The Seahawks have more cap space for 2022 than they’ve had in many years, an estimated $55.98 million based on a projected cap rising to $208.2 million next year, according to overthecap.com.
Then again, they are going to be considering how much to offer Pro Bowl safety Quandre Diggs, whose contract expires in two games. He could become a free agent in March. Carroll and Schneider must also decide whether to pay 36-year-old left tackle Duane Brown for 2022. Brown, like Diggs, has wanted a new deal from Seattle since before last summer.
Wide receiver DK Metcalf in 2022 will be entering the final year of the rookie contract he has massively out-performed.
And so it will go in the annual offseason decision making every NFL team goes through to maintain and reset a roster for the coming year.
“All I can control is these last two games, and figure it out from there,” Wagner said. “Whatever the team seems or thinks is the best thing to do moving forward, we’ll see how that plays out.”
Last week, Wagner was named to the Pro Bowl for the eighth time. That ties Wilson and Hall of Fame defensive tackle Cortez Kennedy for second-most in franchise history. Hall of Fame left tackle Walter Jones had nine Pro Bowls.
Wagner is a six-time All-Pro. That’s the most of those even-more-elite selections in Seahawks history, two more than Jones.
“It’s really unique. It’s special. It’s hard to do,” said Seahawks defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr., Wagner’s position coach when he came into the league with Seattle.
“I think he’s really set a new standard...
“And he’s still getting better. ...He’s not done yet.”
‘What more could you ask for?’
This week, Carroll didn’t sound like he was about to send Wagner away.
The coach was asked if Wagner will change the way inside linebackers are judged in the NFL.
“I don’t think that it will be a factor, because to find a guy with this kind of consistency, character, and the constitution of how he does his work, how he handles his business, everybody wants that guy,” Carroll said.
“If nothing else, he does make a statement for the model of what you are looking for. He really is a tremendous team player in all ways. It also speaks to why we paid him the way we paid him. He was that valuable to our organization, our club, our locker room, and our community, as well. What more could you ask for?
“He had 170 tackles, too, year in and year out. I think in that regard, he is a standard, but I don’t know if he is going to change people because everybody would want to get that guy if they could. I don’t know if that is so fresh and new, but he is the standard.”
Lately, Wagner has been mentoring Jordyn Brooks since the Seahawks drafted the speedy outside linebacker in the first round in the spring of 2020.
This season, replacing departed K.J. Wright, Brooks has 156 tackles. He is just 11 off Wagner’s team old tackles record that had stood until Wagner broke it last week.
Wagner sees the downside to all the tackles he and Brooks are making, and have had to make. Largely because of season-long problems getting off the field on third downs, the Seahawks’ defense has played more snaps than any other unit in the NFL.
Wagner has played 1,127 snaps on defense in 15 games. Sometime during the first half Sunday he will set his career high in time spent on the field when he plays his 16th snap against the Lions.
“The downside is probably all the plays we played to get those tackles,” Wagner said of all his and Brooks’ tackles, chuckling. “That’s probably not always a great thing to be out there on the field as long as we’ve been out there on the field.
“But at the end of the day, we are out there, and we still have to make our plays.
“I would say the downside is how long we are out there on the field. But the upside is, when they come to us more often than not we make the plays.”
This story was originally published December 29, 2021 at 4:15 PM.
