Seahawks’ Pete Carroll Foreshadows New Role For Bobby Wagner

Upon his return to the Pacific Northwest, Bobby Wagner should maintain an important role on the Seattle Seahawks defense, but it likely will include a diminished workload for multiple reasons.

Only a year after saying goodbye to the franchise icon as a cap casualty, the Seattle Seahawks welcomed back perennial All-Pro linebacker Bobby Wagner with a one-year deal worth up to $7 million on Saturday.

While some wondered if a Wagner homecoming to Seattle would actually happen after the Los Angeles Rams agreed to part ways with the veteran defender, coach Pete Carroll never had any doubts the two sides would get back together in time. Though the split last March wasn't a pleasant one, the strong relationship built between the two legends endured, keeping the door open for a quick reunion.

"It's such a win-win for everybody," Carroll said at the NFL Annual Meeting on Tuesday via John Boyle of Seahawks.com. "Because Bobby wasn't here for a year, it doesn't have anything to do with our relationship, except for he played a great game against us down there, and it was good to get him back on our side. Over the years that we spent together, there's a real relationship that's a life-long relationship. Not just with me, but with people around the organization, with the people in the area, the fans. He lives in Seattle, his family's there, he raised his kids there. It was just a logical thing for us to work out.”

Coming back to his old stomping grounds, Wagner brings a resume that stacks up against not just the best players in Seahawks history, but the best linebackers from any era in NFL history. Along with being the franchise's leader in tackles by a wide margin, he's one of only 10 linebackers to earn six or more First-Team All-Pro honors and after receiving Second-Team distinction in 2022, he's closing in on a remarkable 10 All-Pro selections for his career.

Bringing back such an accomplished talent as Wagner should immediately bolster the middle of a Seattle defense that faced serious question marks going into the offseason with Jordyn Brooks recovering from an ACL tear and Cody Barton hitting free agency. While Brooks appears to be on schedule in his recovery, Barton departed for Washington earlier this month, leaving a major void at an important position.

Given the circumstances, Carroll said Wagner's celebrated return "is going to be a real positive thing" for the Seahawks. However, he also acknowledged that not everything remains the same as when the 12-year pro departed a year ago, including a different defensive scheme than the one he starred in for a decade.

"We're starting over with this thing, we're going about it in some new ways and with new thoughts," Carroll said. "He's coming in to compete and battle his tail off and help us be as good as we can possibly be. He's going to help guys. That's one of the cool things that leaders bring; they're going to help other guys play better, and Bobby will do that. That's part of the reason that our guys are really excited about him being back."

But combing through Carroll's remarks on Tuesday, while Wagner remains as respected as any player to ever don a Seahawks uniform and should be penned in as a Week 1 starter, his return to the organization likely will come with an adapted role. Reading between the lines, it's possible his days as an every down defender may officially be coming to an end.

Among his most notable statements from Arizona, Carroll squashed the notion that Seattle's signing of versatile safety Julian Love spelled doom for Jamal Adams' future with the team. Maintaining the same vision he has had since the team acquired the All-Pro safety nearly three years ago, he hopes to finally see an extensive dose of three safety sub-packages with a healthy Adams thriving playing alongside Quandre Diggs and Love.

When asked if the safety trio would play around 25 percent of the snaps for the Seahawks, Carroll quickly refuted that estimate, responding, "Oh no, they'll play together a lot more than that."

Under the premise that Carroll and defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt intend to play three-safety sets with much greater frequency in 2023, that could be bad news for Wagner, who hasn't played less than 90 percent of his team's defensive snaps since his rookie season in 2012. At this stage of his career, with his 33rd birthday coming in June, asking him to cover large areas of space in the middle of the field on passing downs doesn't play to his current strengths.

Keeping that in mind, the Seahawks may opt to sub in a younger, more athletic linebacker in Wagner's place in nickel packages on passing downs. Or, as they experimented with in training camp last year before he suffered a torn quad tendon in the season opener, Adams may slide up as a sub-package linebacker in nickel, dime, and "bandit" sets with five or more defensive backs on the field, giving the team more flexibility with the coverages they can call.

If there's an advantage for Wagner, Carroll anticipates there will be some carry over from what he did with the Rams last season that should help expedite his acclimation period. Some of the things coordinator Clint Hurtt may ask him to do will accentuate his current skill set well, including possibly playing more snaps near the line of scrimmage and blitzing a bit more, an area he excelled producing 20 pressures and six sacks in 2022.

Even in nickel and dime sets, Wagner could stay on the field in such a capacity. But if the goal is to get Adams, Diggs, Love, and possibly even Ryan Neal on the field at the same time, it may be tougher to justify keeping him on the field in passing situations with such personnel groupings at this stage of his career.

From general manager John Schneider's perspective, that wouldn't be a knock on Wagner at all either after turning in a dominant season in Los Angeles last year. Instead, the setup would keep the veteran linebacker fresh to rack up tackles on early downs while allowing Seattle to deploy a wide array of looks to throw at opposing offenses, creating a win-win situation for all parties.

"I think Pete and [Clint Hurtt] have a real cool plan so he doesn't have to be out there a thousand plays," Schneider said on Tuesday. "He'll be able to see how he does and be able to manage the situation. Especially with new guys coming in like Julian [Love] and [Devin] Bush, how they're going to rotate all those guys. It'll be cool."

As Carroll noted, with the offseason program set to kick off on April 17, the Seahawks will just have to wait and see how everything pieces together in coming months. While Wagner may not play the same number of snaps he has in the past by design, there's still plenty of excitement about No. 54 returning to anchor the middle of the defense and high expectations for his impact both on and off the field.

"We have added some stuff that I think will really fit. The fact that he was in a system that was similar will help the process and that transition. There's nothing that we can't handle at all. I'm excited for Bobby to do the stuff that we're doing now, how we've kind of tweaked it and cleaned it up and all that. He'll add to it because of our background also, because we're doing some of everything. It'll be a really cool process to watch how that goes."

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