Getty The Seahawks are moving on from Bobby Wagner.
Star linebacker Bobby Wagner has one year remaining on his 3-year, $54 million contract but faces an uncertain future with the Seattle Seahawks. Wagner’s $20.3 million cap hit and $16.3 million salary makes him a potential cap casualty this offseason.
During the NFL Combine, Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll expressed the team’s desire to retain Wagner. Yet, Carroll also added that the team has to “figure out where everybody fits together.”
“Well, we expect to play with Bobby,” Carroll noted during his March 2 press conference. “We love playing with Bobby. He’s been a great player, had another great season.
“At this time of year, there’s a lot of guys that are in a position where we’ve got to figure out where everybody fits together. And Bobby has been such a steady part of it, we’d love to be able to play with him, so we’ll work towards that. If we can do that, we’ll do it.”
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Schneider on Wagner’s Future: ‘You Have to Evaluate Every Position’
If you are playing “parsing Pete” at home, a favorite pastime for Seahawks fans, Seattle could approach Wagner to restructure his contract. This could be in the form of a contract extension, or simply asking the linebacker to take less money for 2022.
How Wagner responds to this request will likely play a major impact on if the star defender is on the Seahawks roster for Week 1. Seahawks general manager John Schneider sounded more non-committal when asked about Wagner’s status.
“We learn a lot this week when we meet with everybody’s agents,” Schneider noted on March 2, per The News Tribune’s Gregg Bell. “We’ll come around next week and kind of reset like, and recalibrate — what does that look like? 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.”
The Seahawks Are Trying to Avoid Contract Restructures Which Clouds Wagner’s Future
The Seahawks are not in a desperate situation cap wise with an estimated $35 million in space for 2022, even with Wagner’s current deal, per Spotrac. The challenge is the Seahawks need to upgrade their roster while also trying to re-sign key free agents. Some of the top Seahawks free agents include Duane Brown, Quandre Diggs, D.J. Reed and Rashaad Penny.
Schneider indicated the Seahawks are trying to avoid doing contract restructures. As The Athletic’s Michael-Shawn Dugar explained, this puts Wagner’s future in Seattle very much in doubt.
“This is notable for Wagner, whose $20.3 million cap hit in 2022 may be a tough pill to swallow for a team that wants to retain its good players and add new ones,” Dugar wrote on March 2. “If Schneider and salary cap manager Matt Thomas maintain this position throughout the offseason, it’s fair to wonder what Wagner’s future looks like. If the team isn’t willing to restructure his contract, its options become cutting or trading their defensive captain, or asking him to take a pay cut (the latter happened with Carlos Dunlap last offseason).”