Bobby Wagner’s secrets to longevity, and why this Seahawks opener is like no other for him
Bobby Wagner cocked his head. He listened. Then he nodded approvingly when told of his latest testament to his longevity and consistency.
It seemed he hadn’t considered that Sunday inside Lumen Field against the Los Angeles Rams, Wagner will play in his 12th consecutive season opener at middle linebacker.
It’s no easy feat. His is a spot of relentless physicality, the football equivalent of 60-plus car crashes per game. For 12 years, offensive linemen, fullbacks, tight ends and more have run at and smashed into him in the middle of a defense.
Yet Wagner, 33, hasn’t missed a single week one in his NFL career.
He, of course, remembers his first: For the Seahawks, between outside linebackers K.J. Wright and LeRoy Hill at Arizona on Sept. 9, 2012. That was to begin his rookie season.
His most recent opener was last year, his lone season with the Rams. That was after Seattle cut him in March 2022 to save $16 million in salary-cap space.
Only one active NFL linebacker as old as Wagner has played in as many consecutive opening games. On the same day Wagner was debuting in the middle of Seattle’s defense in Arizona in 2012, Lavonte David started as the rookie weakside linebacker for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers against Carolina week one of that season.
Wagner and David were not only teammates but roommates at the 2012 Senior Bowl. That’s the late-January showcase week for college players in front of NFL scouts in Mobile, Alabama.
David is 155 days older than Wagner. The Bucs drafted him 11 spots after the Seahawks drafted Wagner, in the second round 11 years ago. David is still Tampa Bay’s starting linebacker, inside, also beginning his 12th NFL season.
“I talk to Lavante pretty often,” Wagner said Wednesday. “We always text each other before the season. We always check in at some point during the season. Then after the season, for sure. ...
“He’s someone I always keep a close eye on.”
David is one of only three linebackers older than Wagner who will be starting in week one this season. Demario Davis with New Orleans and Justin Houston with Carolina are both past their 34th birthdays.
Edge rusher Von Miller, also 34, is on the Buffalo Bills’ physically-unable-to-perform list and out to begin this season.
To what does Wagner attribute his remarkable longevity?
“I think consistency,” he said.
That, above all else, is Wagner’s hallmark on the field. And off it.
“I think the hunger for knowledge,” he said, listing more reasons for his long career. “And the people that I’ve surrounded myself with — whether it’s business, health, things of that nature. I’ve had a lot of people help me through the course of my career, be it on the football field or from a health perspective.
“I just have a great team. I work with a lot of amazing people.
“And I’m really consistent with what I do.”
It’s not just that he arrives each day at team headquarters at or before dawn. to begin his workouts, weight lifting, film study and the systematic preparation of his mind and body for that day’s practice and that week’s game.
“He still weighs 242,” Pete Carroll said. “He’s weighed that for 10 years.”
Carroll is the coach who drafted Wagner for Seattle out of Utah State one round before the team took Russell Wilson in 2012.
Don’t forget yoga. Wagner doesn’t. He does it habitually, in season and out, to maintain his flexibility, muscle health and ability to stave off injuries.
Hot yoga has been his recent thing. He had a place in Seattle’s eastside suburbs he went to for many of his 10 years with the Seahawks through the 2021 season.
When he returned to the team this spring, signing a one-year contract, he found his favorite hot-yoga studio had closed. He immediately found a new one.
Imagine strolling into your local hot-yoga place and the future Hall-of-Fame linebacker is sweating the stretch next to you.
When he and his Rams finished their miserable, 2022 season with a 5-12 record, Wagner, was back doing daily yoga beginning four days after his final game for L.A., in January.
“Consistency,” Seahawks wide receiver DK Metcalf said. “Bobby, every morning, is going to be here at 6, 6:30. He’s always going to work out. He’s always going to get his massages. He’s the same person.
“Never wavers.”
Pete Carroll’s ‘special’ meeting
The music was blaring inside Carroll’s office at the Seahawks’ Virginia Mason Athletic Center Wednesday. Wagner knocked. He’d came up to see his coach of 11 of the last 12 years.
Carroll turned Wagner from an overlooked high-school senior under 6 feet with no major-college offers to play football out of Ontario, California, in 2008 — a teen whose coach tricked Utah State’s coach into giving Wagner a scholarship — into a six-time All-Pro and Super Bowl champion. Wagner has earned $101 million in the NFL.
The music the 71-year-old Carroll was blasting in his office Wednesday morning?
“I think it was Rick James,” Wagner said.
“It definitely changed to Prince. But it was loud.”
Wagner didn’t begin playing football until his junior year at Colony High School in Ontario. He had been a basketball player. For football, he thought he was headed to a junior college, maybe to play with future Seahawks teammate Bruce Irvin at Mt. San Antonio College, 16 miles west of Wagner’s hometown.
When Wagner was a high school senior, then-Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh came to the Inland Empire on a recruiting trip. So did a member of Utah State’s coaching staff. Harbaugh and the Utah State coach happened to be in the same bar-restaurant in the Ontario area. Wagner’s coach at Colony, Anthony Rice, saw them there.
“He walked over to Jim Harbaugh and said, ‘We’ve got this linebacker. You should look at him,’” Wagner said in 2021. “Jim said, ‘No.’ Then he went from Jim Harbaugh to Utah State and said, ‘Hey, that guy over there is going to offer him if you don’t.’
“That’s how I ended up at Utah State.”
Carroll doesn’t often divulge the private meetings he has with his players.
But he did Wednesday.
“Bobby came by this morning, and it was just a really good moment,” Carroll said. “We’ve gotten this far together. All this time that we’ve spent together, I’m just so grateful to have him in our football world, again.”
Carroll wanted to ensure Wagner is managing this week well. The coach wants him ready to perform at his best while facing his Rams teammates from last season amid the emotions of returning to Seattle and the Seahawks. It promises to be a roaring love-fest for number 54 on Sunday at Lumen Field.
“I want to make sure that he’s (clear-headed). He’s got to manage it, too. There’s a lot going on,” Carroll said. “You know, with relationships last year and all of that. ...
“Trying too hard is a big issue, and I want to make sure we don’t do that. Stay within ourselves.”
Wagner’s takeaway from their meeting Wednesday was mutual admiration.
“We just kind of had a moment, where we were like, ‘Man, all the stuff that we’ve been through, the good, the bad, the ugly, to be in this position to be together, start another season, trying to win a championship...,’” Wagner said.
“It was something that was a moment of appreciation.”
The coach who seeks to maximize the physical skills of his players calls Wagner the nearly perfect athlete.
“He’s a gifted athlete. He’s appropriate for the position. His ability to run. His physical nature,” Carroll said.
The coach then used the same word Wagner and Metcalf did.
“And the consistency that has come along with that, his mentality. You have to give him all the credit in that,” Carroll said. “He has always been just rock solid on how he handles his business, and how he prepares, and how he performs.
“And he just continues to do it. ...
“His consistency is really what jumps out.”
A surprising return
This time last year, Wagner was back in Southern California preparing to play in the league’s kickoff game. He and his defending Super Bowl-champion Rams had the Thursday-night showcase game against Buffalo.
He’d found out from a third party, not Carroll or general manager John Schneider or anyone with the Seahawks, that they were cutting him in the spring of 2022.
Returning to play for Seattle?
“At this moment last year? No. I didn’t think so, at all,” Wagner said Wednesday.
“I thought it was a chapter that closed. Watching guys like ‘Sherm’ (Richard Sherman), K.J., Kam (Chancellor), Cliff (Avril) — I think the only person that really got a chance to come back was Bruce (Irvin, last year) — and so I didn’t feel like it was a possibility.
“God works in mysterious ways.”
Now, he’s back at the center of the Seahawks’ rebuild of their defensive front seven. Without Wagner, Seattle was 30th in the league against the run last season. That subverted much of what Geno Smith and the offense did for the team to make the playoffs as a wild card.
Wagner has an entirely new defensive line in front of him: Dre’Mont Jones and Mario Edwards starting at ends flanking nose tackle Jarran Reed. Wagner’s got a scheme different from the 4-3 Carroll had him in the middle of in his first 10 years with Seattle. It’s now a 3-4. Wagner is sharing some duties between the hashmarks and down the field with Jordyn Brooks, the other inside linebacker. Brooks is returning a wowing eight months after he tore an anterior cruciate knee ligament.
Of course his teammates this week voted Wagner as their Seahawks defensive team captain, for the seventh time.
After a year away, their “unique and special” leader, to use his coach’s words, is back.
“I think it’s humbling. It’s a blessing. I really appreciate my teammates,” Wagner said.
“Just being away for a year and coming back, them still holding me in a high regard, it means a lot.”
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This story was originally published September 7, 2023 at 5:04 AM.
