Tear-it-Up Tuesday: Bobby Wagner says Seahawks are releasing him post-Russell Wilson trade
The Seahawks are rebuilding. And they aren’t doing it quietly or halfway.
They are doing it on perhaps the most tumultuous, changing single day in Seattle sports history.
Hours after the team agreed to trade quarterback Russell Wilson to the Denver Broncos, All-Pro Bobby Wagner told The News Tribune Tuesday night Seattle is releasing him.
The Seahawks are expected to make the release of the 31-year-old All-Pro middle linebacker official on Wednesday.
The Seahawks are saving $16.6 million against their 2022 salary cap by releasing Wagner now. They saved $11 million trading Wilson, with a $26 million dead cap charge on him for this year.
Wilson and Wagner, captains and franchise cornerstones, out of Seattle the way they entered town to begin the longest run of success and only Super Bowl victory in team history.
Together.
Wagner said at the end of the Seahawks’ 7-10 season this winter he was wondering about his future with Seattle.
“You think about it. You think about what the next year looks like and just, period, what the future holds,” Wagner said Dec. 29, “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.”
The issue at hand with Wagner: He is coming off a late-season knee injury this winter and turns 32 this summer. He is entering the final year of his three-year, $54 million contract. General manager John Schneider and his contract executive Matt Thomas intentionally back-loaded Wagner’s deal to have its highest salary-cap charge to the team in the last year, 2022. That cost was scheduled to be $20.35 million, second only to Wilson’s $37 million.
That was an untenable charge. He had to take a pay cut to stay. At the end of last season, Wagner said he wanted to continue playing for the Seahawks — but that he wasn’t looking to give back money.
A trade wasn’t tenable, either. His ending contract with that $20 million cap charge for 2022 would have gone with him to any team acquiring him in a trade.
Jordyn Brooks, the 2020 first-round pick who set the franchise record for tackles last season as a weakside, outside linebacker replacing K.J. Wright, now has a chance to replace Wagner. Brooks played middle linebacker one year in college, his final one at Texas Tech.
Or Cody Barton, the Seahawks’ third-round pick in 2019, could get his chance. He’s more of a true middle linebacker. He’s first NFL regular-season snaps there came in the final game and a half of the 2021 season, after Wagner hurt his knee.
Or the Seahawks now have four picks in the first 74 selections of next month’s draft plus $37 million in new cap space to get a new linebacker to replace Wagner.
Wagner has been representing himself, without an agent, since signing his contract with the team directly negotiating with Schneider in the spring into summer of 2019. So there is no middle man here.
That is part of why Schneider and coach Pete Carroll noticeably were careful in choosing their words talking about Wagner’s contract and future with the team last week at the league’s annual scouting combine in Indianapolis.
“We learn a lot this week when we meet with everybody’s agents. We’ll come around next week and kind of reset like, and recalibrate — what does that look like?” Schneider said in the hallway of the JW Marriott hotel in Indianapolis. “We will do that then, at that point.
“Now there’s been ... obviously, you have to evaluate every position — and he’s an amazing player.”
Wagner’s $20 million cap charge was hindering what Schneider and Carroll hope to do with the many free agents with expired contracts Seattle has ready to enter the market when it opens March 16.
That is, offer attractive-enough deals to re-sign Pro Bowl safety Quandre Diggs, cornerback D.J. Reed, running back Rashaad Penny, left tackle Duane Brown and perhaps right tackle Brandon Shell and center Ethan Pocic, among others, to keep them from leaving this month.
“We are going to try to keep all of our players,” Schneider said. “That’s why we are having all these meetings with all these agents, right? Yeah, we want your guy back. But, but, how’s it going to work out? Then you just go day by day.”
Carroll said: “It’s a big challenge ...The next two weeks are huge” to retain the above free agents.
No bigger than the biggest day of moves in Seahawks history.
It might become known around Seattle as Tear-it-Up Tuesday.
In January, days before the Seahawks’ season finale, Wagner said: “In my mind, I don’t feel like this is my last time. I don’t feel like this is my last time putting on a Seahawks uniform. I don’t feel it’s my last time doing that.
Wagner sprained his knee Jan. 2 trying to change directions on a screen pass on the first play of the Seahawks’ win over Detroit. He did not return to the game.
It’s proved to be his last one as a Seahawk.
“I understand there is a business side to this, but there’s a lot of optimism on my end I’ll be back. So, I’m not worried about it,” Wagner said in January.
“Obviously, I can’t control everything. I can only control my part, and my part on this is I feel like, I love this city. I love this team. I love the Seahawks. And so I always wanted to be part of a franchise’s good times and bad times, and every time. And so this is a team I would love to be able to be a part of for a very, very long time.
“So on my end, that’s where I’m at, that I’m a Seahawk until they tell me I’m not.”
This story was originally published March 8, 2022 at 7:35 PM.
