Ultra-consistent Bobby Wagner, invoking Kobe Bryant, closes in on yet another Seahawks 100
Bobby Wagner was doing what he does just about every day.
He was learning more of what made Kobe Bryant legendary.
Wagner is a lifelong Los Angeles Lakers fan. The Seahawks’ All-Pro linebacker grew up in Ontario, California. That was 41 miles east on the 10 Freeway from Staples Center, the arena where Bryant played as an iconic NBA champion with the Lakers beginning when Wagner was 9 years old..
Wagner reveres Bryant, for his basketball and for his approach to sport — and life.
Tuesday night the Seahawks captain was online doing more research of Bryant, who died last year in a helicopter crash west of Los Angeles. Wagner was watching a montage of videos of Kobe’s mental approaches.
“It was a video that basically just put all of Kobe Bryant’s thoughts into laws, and it was a compilation of interviews that he had,” Wagner said. “I just wanted to share that for all my athletes.
“Just watching that video, it kind of hit me how much Kobe had an impact on my life. Through the way I carry myself, the way I try to be detail-oriented in the game, attention to detail, just the way I approach the game. Just watching him, he was the first player I ever watched from start to finish. So, I thought that video was really cool.”
This season Wagner has been beginning his weekly press conferences by detailing a company or an idea the part-time entrepreneur has been involved with outside of football.
After watching the video of Bryant’s philosophies, Wagner changed this Wednesday’s lead off. He pointed young athletes to Bryant’s renowned “Mamba Mentality.”
“I think everybody saw how amazing of a person he was. The thing that kind of stood out the most to me was, from the outside looking in we saw Kobe just really, really locked in on basketball to the point we thought that was all he did. As he retired and you saw all of the other stuff, you realize he had been writing for 17 years, he had been looking into videos and all those different things. I say that to say that even someone who was super locked-in and super focused on his craft still found time to master something else.
“That’s what I would like to encourage athletes as they’re embarking on their journey, whatever sport they’re in, regardless of your craft that you’re trying to perfect. Understand and keep an open mind that there’s other things to be mastered.
“We are not a one-shot pony. We can be more than just athletes.”
Wagner has mastered his craft better than any middle linebacker of his era.
The six-time All-Pro and seven-time Pro Bowl selection again is leading the NFL this season with 93 tackles. With seven more stops Sunday when he and his Seahawks (3-5) play the Packers (7-2) in Green Bay, Wagner will reach 100 tackles in a season for the 10th consecutive year. That will extend his Seahawks record, and the NFL’s second-longest such streak in the last quarter century.
London Fletcher had at least 100 tackles in each of the final 14 seasons of his 16-year career for the Rams, Bills and Washington from 1998-2013.
The consistency
There’s a high probability Wagner gets to his latest 100 on Sunday. He is averaging a dozen tackles per game this season.
“He’s just been consistent. He has great habits. He’s really durable, and really dominant,” said Seahawks defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr..
Norton would know. He was Wagner’s position coach when Seattle drafted the supposedly too-short linebacker who had only one major-college scholarship offer (to Utah State) in the second round in 2012.
Now he’s the most accomplished middle linebacker of his time. He’s a Super Bowl champion who has grown to see and appreciate more of life beyond the game he’s mastered, like Bryant mastered his.
“It’s a testament to the way he lives his life every day. The routine he sets. How hard he works,” Norton said of Wagner. “The way he loves this game, it is amazing to see. If you look at all of the great linebackers over time, I don’t know if even the great ones have been able to get 100 tackles in 10 years straight.
“That’s pretty hard to do and it’s a really, really special thing that he has been able to accomplish.”
For Wagner, 100 tackles in a season isn’t extraordinary. It’s expected.
The hardest part for him of maintaining that consistency, of being that same, year in and year out?
“People get bored with it. Doing the same thing every day, or trying to be consistent, people get bored with it, so they stray from it,” Wagner said.
He again referenced the Bryant video he watched this week.
“You have a conversation with yourself and it’s almost like a negotiation, where you commit to something, and you say you’re going to do it every day. Then you have those one or two days where it’s like maybe I’m going to take a couple reps off,” Wagner said. “Maybe I’m going to take today off. Maybe my body needs this rest. It’s a constant battle with your inner self.”
More than money
He negotiated the four-year, $54 million extension with the Seahawks himself, without an agent. He signed it before the 2019 season. At the time it was the richest in league history for an inside linebacker.
But it’s been about so much more than money for Wagner.
Two weeks ago he teamed with the Seattle chapter of Head Start, the nation’s federally funded child-development program to provide Halloween costumes and meals to help 200 kids from low-income families in the Puget Sound region.
Wagner has bought shoppers’ Thanksgiving groceries for more than a half hour at a Seattle Safeway. He has partnered with the city’s Low Income Housing Institute’s project to house the homeless. He’s led “Walk with Wagner” events to raise stroke awareness across Western Washington.
For that and more, Wagner was the Seahawks nominee for the NFL’s most prestigious honor, the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, in 2019.
The awards. The money. The consistency. The daily “negotiation” he sometimes may have with himself.
He says he doesn’t get bored with any of what he’s done for Seattle for a decade.
“No, I don’t think there’s ever been a point,” Wagner said.
“A lot of consistency is about growth, so I feel like the moment that I stop wanting to grow if when I walk away.”
He says “there’s still aspects of my game that I feel like I can get better at. There’s still parts of my body I can get stronger. There’s still things I can do. I haven’t been bored because there’s still so much growth that’s still out there for myself.”
Like beating the Packers in Lambeau Field. Wagner has never done that. No Seahawk has. Seattle hasn’t won in Green Bay since 1999. That’s 0-6 in the regular season, and three more losses in the playoffs.
Wagner cites Aaron Rodgers as a huge reason for that. The Packers maestro quarterback and NFL most valuable player is expected back playing Sunday from a positive COVID-19 test and subsequent 10-day quarantine that is to end Saturday.
“The odds are typically stacked against you,” Wagner said.
“But I like our odds this week.”
‘Magical and special’
Wagner credits Norton for driving him, often hard, to become the player he’s been for the Seahawks.
The former three-time Super Bowl-champion and All-Pro linebacker takes pride in Wagner, in his 100 tackles every year — and more so how he lives life.
“It’s important,” Norton said of his personal stake in Wagner’s accomplishments. “I think that any time you coach, spend the time, energy, effort, and life that we put into this game, you find a way to play with the person or play through the person.
“The fact that I had been able to play this game for a long time myself, I really understand the effort, the focus, the sacrifice, and discipline that goes into what he’s been able to do.
“That’s really magical and special.”
Norton acknowledges he was hard on the younger Wagner.
“In a lot of ways, yes,” the coach said.
“In a lot of ways, no.
“You just have to know when to be toughest and when to hug them,” Norton said. “You have to understand when are the moments that you have to be hard and tough, and you have to understand that there’s a way to say things tough, but don’t come off tough. You just have to be smart.
“It’s like being with your family or raising your kids. You just have to be stern in a certain way, but sometimes you have to find the words to say where it doesn’t come off negative.”
Wagner’s 20 tackles in the Seahawks’ overtime loss to Tennessee in week two were the most in the league since 2016, and the ninth-most in an NFL game this century, according to Seattle’s public-relations staff.
Teammate and fellow Pro Bowl veteran defender Quandre Diggs says chief among all he likes about Wagner is that his captain is always joking around.
“Bro, you are 31. Quit playin’,’” Diggs often tells Wagner.
“I would think a 10-year guy, he wouldn’t be playin as much,” Diggs said.
Then Diggs smiled.
For Wagner, it’s about life balance.
Which brings Wagner back to Bryant.
Everyday life brings Wagner back to Bryant. And he thinks people from all walks could benefit from striving to be a little like Bryant in their lives.
“He had a work ethic,” Wagner said. “Any time you talk about Kobe Bryant or somebody who was around Kobe Bryant, you talked about his work ethic.
“He gave us the formula— not just in your sport, but in business or in art. He showed you the level of focus that you have to have to really be good at something.”
This story was originally published November 11, 2021 at 8:26 AM with the headline "Ultra-consistent Bobby Wagner, invoking Kobe Bryant, closes in on yet another Seahawks 100."
