Bobby Wagner: 'People say 167 tackles are great, but why not 200?'

RENTON, Wash. – Bobby Wagner didn’t just lead the NFL in tackles last year. Wagner had 167 tackles on the season, which is 18 more than second-place Zach Brown’s 149 – a whopping 12 percent better.

And yet.

Somehow, after what just about any player in the game’s history would consider a career year, Wagner found things to nitpick.

Things like:

“Seeing routes a little better was one,” Wagner said during an exclusive interview with the home of the Seahawks, Q13 FOX.

And:

“I had a lot of QB pressures that I’d like to turn into sacks this year.”

And these gems:

“People say that 167 tackles are great, by why not 200? Instead of 4.5 sacks, why not eight?”

Don’t think for a second that Wagner’s relentless pursuit of perfection is joyless, though. For one, he says he might be polishing up a new sack dance now the NFL has deemed them legal.

“Yeah, we ain’t gonna get fined no more, so … we’ll see, I have something in the works,” he said.

One decision Wagner isn’t so happy with is a new crackdown on illegal hits.

“I don’t think you should get ejected, because it’s a very, very hard sport to figure out where somebody hits,” Wagner said. “Especially when the receiver or running back ducks their head, but you’re the one that gets ejected for it.”

A new rule barring defensive players from jumping over the line of scrimmage on kicks didn’t sit well with Wagner either.

“It takes the fun out of that play,” he said. “I feel like, because we were leaping over, people actually started to pay attention to that (part of the) game that they may not have paid attention to before. Everybody’s just waiting for somebody to jump over, trying to figure out who’s the next guy who’s going to jump over, and it kinda takes the excitement out of that play.

“So I’m hoping they see how boring it is not having guys leap over, and they change it back.”