Seahawks 25 best players, #7 Bobby Wagner
By Dan Viens
The Seattle Seahawks roster is generally regarded as one of the best in the NFL top to bottom, but what about the talent level within the roster? Our co-editor Dan Viens takes a shot at ranking the team’s Top 25 players in order.
(PART 19 OF 25 IN A SERIES)
NFL Network does their Top 100 NFL players list every year, and this off season we’ve seen our share of analysts taking a crack at ranking the best rosters in the league. As we enter into the dog days of the off season, with the start of training camp still over a month away, I wanted to see what it would look like if I tried to rank the best 25 players the Seahawks have.
It was harder than I thought.
The top 10 was pretty easy. I would suspect most would end up with the same 10-12 names in some order or another. After that it gets dicey.
Among the challenges, how do you figure in the rookies and players who have never played a down in Seattle?
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My criteria was wide-ranging. Sometimes I went with pure talent, and other times I gave more weight to the players importance to the team. And in certain cases the players role…….played a role in my ranking. When in doubt, however, I would just ask myself “who’s the better player?”
So here we go……
The 7th Best Player On The Seahawks Roster is….
#7: Bobby Wagner, MLB
Wagner is seemingly everything you would want in a quarterback of your defense; young, fast, tough and productive. His consistency as a tackling machine his first three seasons (85, 89 and 83 respectively) earned him 4 year, $43 million extension prior to the 2015 season, making him one of the highest paid LB’s in the league.
But then he slipped to 67 tackles in 15 games last year, and there were whispers he had taken a step back. So what gives?
Could it be a case of a young guy dealing with the pressure of living up to a massive contract, the wear and tear of playing the position so hard, or something more elusive?
It’s difficult to pinpoint, but Wagner’s importance to this defense can not be understated. Whether or not he bounces back and looks like the Bobby Wagner of his first three seasons or not may very well determine just how dominant the Seahawks D can be in 2016.
Next: Baldwin gets his deal, so who's next?
But for now, he clearly belongs in this spot on our list of 25 best Seahawks.