Bobby Wagner hopes to retire with Seahawks — despite Richard Sherman’s ‘lowball’ offer claim

Almost 13 months to the day after it appeared his Seahawks career had ended for good, Bobby Wagner was back at the VMAC on Wednesday, looking as if he’d never left.

During a welcome-back Zoom call with local media, Wagner was wearing the same familiar Seahawks warmups he had for almost every other news conference during his previous decade with the team.

“Just being able to come back in the building, it’s cool,” Wagner said. “Like I said, things didn’t end that great (when he was released on March 8, 2022), and you know I don’t live that far from the building. So I would drive by and not have too many nice things to say about the building until, you know, this happens (re-signing with the Seahawks). So it’s good to be back in this place.”

Wagner so wanted to be back that according to his good friend and former teammate Richard Sherman, he signed with the Seahawks despite them making him what Sherman called a “lowball” offer.

In an interview Wednesday on Sports Radio 93.3 KJR, Sherman said that general manager John Schneider almost derailed the negotiations with Wagner as a result.

“I was hoping that John didn’t mess it up, and he didn’t,” Sherman told KJR during the Puck & Jim Show. “He tried. He tried on multiple occasions.”

Asked how, Sherman said: “Just lowballing a guy. There’s a difference between lowballing and being disrespectful, and they got borderline disrespectful. Thankfully, Bobby really wanted to be with the Seahawks, and he really wanted to come back home. Because other people offered him more money.”

Wagner confirmed again that other teams offered him more money Wednesday.

What Sherman referred to as lowballing, the Seahawks may have seen as trying to fit as many players as they can into what was already a tight 2023 salary cap.

Wagner ended up signing a one-year deal worth $5.5 million.

The Seahawks have as little cap space as just about any team in the NFL. They are listed with just over $6 million overall but more than $3 million in the red in effective cap space, which takes into account money a team needs to sign its draft picks, of which they have 10.

The Seahawks may have been just trying to see how much of a hometown discount Wagner would take.

Wednesday, Wagner said what he wanted from the Seahawks first was a feeling that the team really wanted him back after his messy release a year ago, when he said he had to hear from others that he was being released before hearing it from Schneider and coach Pete Carroll.

Wagner said he had what he called “a very candid, open conversation” with the Seahawks with each side feeling out the other. Schneider has also said the first talks between the two centered in part on ironing out what had occurred a year ago.

Schneider has said the fact that Wagner is serving as his own agent created a different dynamic than the usual negotiations, and Carroll has said the team wanted to explore every option a year ago at keeping Wagner, who was released to save $16.6 million against the salary cap.

“Just letting them know where I was at in the process,” Wagner said of how talks began with the Seahawks. “Then they let me know where they were at in the process. There was mutual interest in wanting to come back. And so that’s really all I wanted to know, whether or not that it was even an option to come back. And kind of once I knew was it an option, we just started to see if it makes sense.”

Certainly, on Wednesday Wagner made clear he was happy it worked out — and that hopes to stay this time to the end of his career.

“If I had my way, yes,” Wagner said of retiring as a Seahawk.

Wagner’s 13-month odyssey — being released by the only team he ever knew, thinking he’d found a new home in his hometown of Los Angeles with the Rams, coming to a mutual agreement that he would be released in L.A. and landing in Seattle — has reinforced in him the reality that anything can happen in the big-business world of the NFL.

The reality is that he may not have been back if not for another reality of the NFL — Jordyn Brooks suffering an ACL injury Jan. 1, an injury that typically requires at least a nine-month recovery.

Brooks took over Wagner’s role as the middle linebacker and defensive play-caller. While Brooks may not be ready for the start of the season, eventually he will return, and Carroll and Schneider said at the NFL league meetings last week Wagner may not play every down as he did in the past.

Wagner, who turns 33 in June, indicated he’ll accept whatever role he’s given saying “we’re going to figure all that out” and that “coming back, I think it can be a collective (responsibility). I just want to be the best version of myself.”

The specter of getting a chance to do that again in his adopted hometown of Seattle made it worth it to Wagner to turn down more money elsewhere.

“For me, I think that I never really wanted to leave in the first place,” Wagner said. “Obviously, business happened and I had an opportunity to go play in the city that I grew up in, so I thought that was cool. Then I wanted to come back to the city that I matured in. For me, it was cool to be able to make that happen with me being able to represent myself. I always thought it was cool when you had those agents out there that were able to kind of get the player what he wanted and so I wanted to be home, this was another home of mine, and I wanted to be back.”