Bobby Wagner’s return to Seattle highlights a larger trend

SEATTLE — Bobby Wagner’s return to Seattle is greater than a reunion between the Seahawks and arguably the best defensive participant in franchise historical past.

It’s additionally a reconciliation.

And it follows a sample of star gamers leaving the Seahawks on bitter phrases, for one motive or one other, solely to return to the staff in some capability with their once-fractured relationship repaired. It occurred with operating again Marshawn Lynch in 2019 and with defensive deal with Jarran Reed earlier this month. To lesser extents, it occurred with cornerback Richard Sherman and defensive finish Michael Bennett, as nicely.

Wagner’s return to Seattle is the most recent instance that with the Seahawks, messy exits and onerous emotions don’t must imply severed ties and bridges burned.

“If you do what we do the way in which we do it, you make investments your self personally,” coach Pete Carroll advised reporters Tuesday on the league’s annual conferences when requested about Wagner’s return. “And if our guys are going to do it proper, [the players] have to do this too.

“So what occurs, you make investments your time and your coronary heart and your love for them and also you create a relationship, an actual relationship. And that’s what you’re seeing. And if it’s an actual relationship the place you actually care about individuals, there’s going to be some ups and downs … However when you actually care, you’ll be there on the finish of it…”

The Seahawks imagine it’s a testomony to the tradition they’ve constructed below Carroll and normal supervisor John Schneider that gamers who go away the staff typically wish to return. However that additionally takes a company that’s prepared to welcome them again, regardless of any points that led to their exit.

And so far as dangerous breakups go, the Seahawks have had some doozies.

By the tip of Lynch’s first stint with Seattle, his relationship with the group had grow to be so strained that he was barely on talking phrases with some staff officers, together with Carroll. A contract dispute, the gut-punch of Tremendous Bowl XLIX and Lynch’s free-spirited methods had all contributed to a extreme disconnect. Probably the most telling signal of that was when Lynch, whereas getting back from an harm within the 2015 playoffs, stunned the Seahawks by not boarding their flight to Minneapolis for a wild-card recreation in opposition to the Vikings.

But in 2019, after a one-year retirement and two seasons with the Oakland Raiders, Schneider orchestrated Lynch’s return late within the 12 months, after accidents decimated Seattle’s backfield.

Reed’s departure in March of 2021 got here after a weird contract dispute wherein he declined what’s generally known as a easy restructure, a typical maneuver that will have freed up cap house whereas paying him the identical amount of cash in 2021. Reed insisted on getting a brand new deal. The Seahawks, in want of funds amid the pandemic salary-cap crunch and upset that Reed wouldn’t work with them, declined and launched him as a substitute.

“That is house for me,” Reed advised the Seahawks’ web site after signing his new deal.

The Seahawks’ 2018 breakup with Sherman was a drawn-out and public course of that included sideline blowups, a commerce request and a few pictures on his approach out at how Carroll’s message had supposedly gotten stale amongst Seattle’s longer-tenured gamers. Sherman by no means performed once more for the Seahawks, however their relationship was repaired to the purpose that the 2 sides had talks a few potential reunion in 2021.

Final 12 months, Carroll described Sherman as one thing of a cornerback guide to the group.

Bennett, additionally a part of the Seahawks’ post-2017 veteran purge, was traded amid a fracture in his relationship with the group. With the fences equally mended, Bennett was a part of the staff’s preseason tv broadcast final summer time.

Wagner’s scenario differs from the others in that his grievances have been well-founded sufficient to elicit an apology from the Seahawks. Although they did inform the star linebacker that he was being launched earlier than that information broke final March, Wagner had already heard it by way of the grapevine and felt he deserved to listen to it from them first.

Even after Carroll and Schneider gave a public mea culpa, every taking accountability for the mishap, Wagner took situation with the overall supervisor’s implication that his not having an agent was an element within the communication breakdown. He referred to as it a weak excuse.

However given the Seahawks’ historical past, the probabilities of a reunion with Wagner appeared to hinge extra on whether or not they might discover a center floor in contract negotiations than whether or not they might let bygones be bygones.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Wagner’s deal is for one 12 months and $7 million, and whereas it isn’t clear if that whole contains efficiency incentives, that quantity felt like a baseline on condition that it’s what linebacker Lavonte David obtained to return to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Like Wagner, David has been within the NFL for 11 years and might be 33 by the beginning of this season. Not like Wagner, he hasn’t constructed a Corridor of Fame resume, nor did he have the sort of productive season Wagner had for the Los Angeles Rams in 2022.

Carroll didn’t specify what Wagner’s position might be in his second Seattle stint however made a number of mentions Tuesday that issues might be completely different from the primary time round. The implication gave the impression to be that Jordyn Brooks will stay the centerpiece of Seattle’s new-look protection at any time when he returns from his ACL surgical procedure, and that Wagner might not be an every-down participant.

Carroll referred to as his return a “win-win” and described the temper contained in the group as celebratory.

In some unspecified time in the future, the Seahawks hope to reconcile with security Earl Thomas, whose tenure in Seattle ended with a holdout and a center finger to Carroll as he was being carted off the sector with a damaged leg.

However given how rancorous the breakup was with quarterback Russell Wilson — together with a current report that he tried to get Carroll and Schneider fired — the final word take a look at of their willingness to forgive and neglect could also be when the time involves induct the quarterback into their Ring of Honor.

However who says you possibly can’t go house? With the Seahawks, you often can — irrespective of the way you left.

“I am at all times going to hold with them and I am by no means going to depart ’em, and I’ll be there on the finish of all the great things and all the dangerous stuff. I’ll nonetheless be there,” Carroll mentioned ultimately month’s NFL mix when requested concerning the report that Wilson needed him fired.

“That is it. I am hanging, and it would not matter who the man is. If you happen to take a look at all the guys which have come by way of our program … no matter what has occurred, has taken place or the issues which were mentioned, when you hold with them, all of it comes again round.”