Pete Carroll, John Schneider say they botched not telling Bobby Wagner he was getting cut
No wonder Bobby Wagner was mad.
Coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider talked over each other Wednesday taking blame for the Seahawks captain, Super Bowl champion and six-time All-Pro linebacker not hearing from the team first that he’d been released last week after 10 seasons.
Wagner posted Friday online on Twitter: “Crazy part about all this. I played there for 10 years & I didn’t even hear it from them that I wasn’t coming back.”
Schneider and Carroll wore that Wednesday during a press conference at Seahawks headquarters.
“That’s on me. I own that,” the GM said.
“That’s on me,” Carroll interjected.
“I wish I could’ve handled things better in that regard, from a communication standpoint,” Schneider said. “I owe it to him, the organization owes it to him.
“From a timing standpoint, I wish I would’ve handled things differently. ...
“Too much respect to have that happen.”
Wagner’s six All-Pro selections are the most in Seahawks history.
Schneider said Wagner representing himself, without an agent, through talks about his $20.35 million salary-cap charge in the final year of his Seattle contract for 2022 helped cause the “communication” issue. Cutting Wagner saved Seattle $16 million in cap space this year.
The Seahawks were trying to trade Wagner last week when news leaked to ESPN’s Adam Schefter the only NFL team the 31-year-old middle linebacker’s known was releasing him.
The team was more likely to sell out all Russell Wilson jerseys to fans at full price this past week than it was to entice another team to trade for Wagner. That was given a foe would have to absorb that $20-million-plus cap hit in the final year of an about-to-be-32-year-old middle linebacker in any trade.
So the league waited for the Seahawks to release him.
Now they can sign him as a free agent at their price, not the one Schneider and Seattle gave him for 2022 three years ago. Wagner and the Dallas Cowboys have had mutual interest. Dallas’ defensive coordinator is Dan Quinn, Wagner’s former defensive coordinator with the Seahawks in their Super Bowl seasons of 2013 and ‘14.
Someone in the Seahawks’ front office told one of the teams with which Schneider had been discussing a possible trade that Seattle was releasing Wagner in lieu of a trade. Schneider implied it had to have been someone from another team that then leaked the move to ESPN.
Either that, or Wagner leaked it himself. Because, again, he’s his own agent. He has represented himself the last three years, since negotiating himself the then-record $54 million contract with the Seahawks in the summer of 2019.
Wagner didn’t leak it himself. He did not yet know.
“I’m guilty, too, because I didn’t want it to happen,” Carroll said. “I wanted Bobby to stay with us forever. I kept encouraging John to see what all of the possible options could be for a way out, that we don’t have to do this.”
Well, the Seahawks didn’t pursue all possible options.
A league source told The News Tribune the Seahawks never asked Wagner to take a pay decrease for 2022. There was no talk to Wagner of a restructured deal to lessen his cap hit and stay in Seattle this year, either. The team made no request Wagner take less money to stay for at least one more season.
There was no option other than his immediate release, the source told the TNT.
Asked Wednesday if there another option besides playing out his contract for Wagner to stay in Seattle, Schneider said: “I would say, no.”
So it was messy on top of inflexible — and, for Wagner’s stated hope of retiring as a Seahawk, hopeless.
Returnee Cody Barton at inside linebacker for 2022, come on down.
“It’s somewhat awkward when a player represents himself,” Schneider said. “We have had some very high-profile individuals represent themselves here (Richard Sherman, Russell Okung over the last decade in Seattle).
“You never know exactly what’s going to happen at the end of the day. So to approach somebody and say, ‘There may be a possible trade, would you consider this?’ and have that player come back to you, that’s not a good situation.
“Too much respect to have something like that happen. We did speak to him, we did talk to him together. We walked through things, so it wasn’t like didn’t speak to him.
“It was just the timing.”
The news of Wagner getting released broke in the evening of the day the Seahawks finalized their mammoth trade of franchise quarterback Russell Wilson to the Denver Broncos.
Carroll said Wednesday the drama over the league-shaking Wilson trade contributed to the leak of Wagner getting released before Wagner found out from his team.
“Each day was crucial as we were drawing closer to it. It seemed like when Russ’ news went out, then everything hit the fan.” Carroll said.
That’s for sure.
“We were supposed to meet with Bobby a couple of days after that and the timing just didn’t work out right. I regret that we didn’t do a better job timing-wise,” Carroll said. “The media was talking about it and the articles were all over the internet. Suggestions were out. It’s a hard deal.
“I was delaying it as much as I could because I love him so much.”
So who exactly leaked that Wagner was getting cut before the Seahawks told Wagner he was getting cut?
“You guys were already talking about stuff. You were talking about it in the media constantly,” Carroll said. “But something happened. I don’t know what it was with Bobby on his end of it.”
Schneider said: “When you represent yourself, I’m just speaking as if it were me, I would be talking to as many teams and agents as I possibly could. I’m not discouraging players from representing themselves, I’m not going down that road at all. When you do have an agent, there’s a certain buffer that goes on there.
“That being said, from a communication standpoint, so much respect that we owed that to him.”
This story was originally published March 17, 2022 at 5:02 AM.
