Plenty new for Bobby Wagner in his Seahawks return vs. when he last played in this defense

For Bobby Wagner, what’s old is new again.

After one season away playing for his native Los Angeles Rams, the six-time All-Pro linebacker has returned to the Seahawks. He re-signed with Seattle for 2023 on March 25, picking back up where he played his first 10 NFL seasons through 2021.

“I approached it from the standpoint of treating it as a new situation and treating it as somewhat coming into a new team,” Wagner said Wednesday. “Even though I know everybody in the building, even though I know a lot, and know the program, I think it is big to come in and learn everybody — because, like myself, I have been away for a year and I have grown and matured in a lot of ways. So I assume everybody has done the same.

“Maybe not (Quandre) Diggs,” Wagner added.

He’s teasing.

Diggs, the Seahawks’ Pro Bowl safety, is a Wagner friend for life. That’s for the daily lobbying Diggs did very publicly, online on his social-media account, for Seattle to bring back Wagner last month.

Wagner said if it wasn’t for Diggs ratcheting up the pressure of public perception, if not on Seahawks decision-makers John Schneider and Pete Carroll directly, Wagner may not have signed his one-year deal worth $5.5 million guaranteed with Seattle.

The deal came 12 months after the Seahawks cut Wagner to save $16.6 million on their salary cap for 2022.

“It meant a lot, because I think that probably played a part in me coming back,” Wagner said of Diggs. “Because there was so much love, not only from him, but DK (Metcalf), Tyler (Lockett), guys that I had played with wanting me back. I think that played a part in it.

“Because a lot had changed since then. There were guys that stepped into leadership roles, guys that stepped up playing wise, and sometimes they don’t want things to change or go back to the way they were.”

Diggs and not any media member or agent (which Wagner doesn’t have) broke the news of Wagner’s signing back with the Seahawks on Twitter.

“For me, those guys, especially Quandre, I don’t think I went a day without seeing a tweet from somebody, so it was cool.”

New Seahawks scheme for Wagner

Yet Wagner’s mindset isn’t the only thing that’s new to him about this second stint with the Seahawks.

Seattle has changed defenses since he last played for the team. Carroll’s 4-3 scheme the 71-year-old coach had run since the 1970s is gone. Carroll ran a 3-4 for the first time during the last Seahawks season.

That means three linemen and four linebackers. It’s not a lone middle linebacker anymore, not the scheme and alignment in which Wagner won a Super Bowl, got selected to eight Pro Bowls and established a Hall-of-Fame career with Carroll and Seattle from 2012-21.

Instead of owning action hashmark to hashmark, if not yard-line numbers to numbers, Wagner will have to share roles in the middle of the defense with new Seahawks inside linebacker Devin Bush. Carroll and Schneider signed Bush to a one-year deal in free agency from Pittsburgh a week before they signed Wagner.

Bush was known as a prolific run stopper and tackler for the Steelers. He’s the only Pittsburgh player to have more than 100 tackles as a rookie. Then in his second NFL season, in 2020, Bush tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee. His play and status in the Steelers defense changed after that.

The Seahawks had one of the worst run defenses in team history last season. Much of the year, Seattle was allowing more than 170 rushing per game, which had it ended that way would have been the worst such mark in franchise history.

Wagner is back to reverse that trend.

“I think the biggest thing that will be an adjustment for me is learning the terminology that they use and learning the different intricacies to how they do it,” Wagner said, comparing being a Seahawk in 2023 to 2012-21.

“But they will still be running some of the stuff that I ran when I was here. I think it will be a combination of stuff that I ran before I left and some of the stuff that they ran when I wasn’t here.

“I’m just excited to compete, find my way on the field, and keep playing at a high level.”

When Wagner last starred in the middle of Seattle’s 4-3 defense, he had four linemen in front of him taking up blockers. That freed him to lead the NFL in and set team records for tackles.

Last season in the 3-4, the Seahawks often played only two true linemen. They moved outside linebackers Uchenna Nwosu and Bruce Irvin up to the line as de facto ends that charged up field out of running plays. Two defensive linemen against five blockers often left offensive linemen free to wall off Seattle’s middle linebackers. The result: huge holes in the rush defense Wagner never experienced while with the Seahawks.

The challenge for Carroll and the defense: eliminate those holes, add new and more dynamic defensive linemen such as Dre’Mont Jones (from Denver on a three-year, $51 million deal) and get Wagner freed again.

Also new for Wagner this time around: K.J. Wright isn’t playing next to him. The Seahawks’ Super Bowl-winning outside linebacker next to Wagner for a decade, Wright retired last summer.

Wagner has played with Jordyn Brooks. Brooks replaced Wagner at inside linebacker and as the defensive signal caller in Seattle last season. Brooks was the weakside linebacker next to Wagner in the 4-3 in the 2020 and ‘21 seasons. In 2021, Brooks broke Wagner’s franchise record for tackles in a season.

But Brooks tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee Jan. 1 in a game against the New York Jets. He’s unlikely to be ready for the start of next season.

Wagner and Bush have, of course, never played together. That is going to change by September.

“I am excited to get back in, learn everybody, and get back into the flow of things,” Wagner said.

Wagner’s Rams year

The 3-4 isn’t totally new to Wagner. He played in it, and splendidly, last season for the Rams as a second inside linebacker with Ernest Jones.

“Last year, I think that when I left, I think a lot of the conversation was centered around that I have been entrenched in one style of defense for a long time, and I wouldn’t be able to play in another scheme,” Wagner said.

“Last year, I was fortunate enough that the scheme I went to with the Rams was the scheme that Seattle was transitioning to. I was able to kind of play in that system for a year and get a little bit of understanding.”

USA Today named him the Rams’ best defensive player last season, when L.A. sunk from Super Bowl champion the previous season to 5-12. Los Angeles decided to release Wagner last month in a salary-cap move, part of its massive rebuild for 2023.

Ten days later, Seattle signed him back — and into another defense new to him, and certainly new from his previous 10 Seahawks seasons.

“Just being able to learn another scheme provides another aspect of the game,” Wagner said. “I am always excited about learning, so I still think there are a lot of areas that I can improve on in my game.

“And I am excited to do that.

“I just think it’s a mentality thing. I’m just coming into a new situation. And I think regardless of it whether it was when I came here as a rookie all of those years ago or when I went to L.A. and then coming back here, I work for everything.

“So I don’t want anything to be given to me. I plan on working and letting the chips fall where they may.”