I think there's a small mistake in the first post of this thread. I just looked at the NFL's top 100 players for 2022, and Wilson is indeed 61st, and Wagner is 29th, not 25th. Nick Bosa is 25th.
As I understand it, the players vote on which players they consider the best for this season, so it's not based solely on 2021. So even though I don't agree with the people here on .NET who appear to be more fans of Wilson than of the Seahawks, especially those who at least appear to credit Wilson for every good thing that has happened for the Seahawks in the last ten years and blame every bad thing on Carroll, I think these rankings are nuts. I think Wilson is too far down the list and Wagner is too close to the top.
Last season, Wagner appeared to have lost more to age than Wilson had. Wilson had a bad-for-him season because of his injury and because of coming back from it too soon, but Wagner just looked like he had "lost a step" to age. That is, even though Wagner was second-team All-Pro in 2021, he didn't look the same on the field as he had in previous seasons, and that looked like the beginning of age-related decline.
Both Wilson and Wagner are clearly all-time great Seahawks and obvious shoo-in candidates for the Ring of Honor.
Wagner should easily make the Hall of Fame. He placed fifth in the MVP voting after the 2014 season. It's crazy for a linebacker to place that high. Wagner has been second-team All-Pro twice and first-team All-Pro a honkin' six times.
Wilson has been by a ridiculously huge margin the best QB the Seahawks have ever had, and he's been a top-ten-ish QB for a good part of his career. If you compare his performance with that of QBs from earlier eras, he blows them away. But QBs have been getting better and better, so despite Wilson being really good and having made the Pro Bowl nine times in his ten seasons, he's only made second-team All-Pro once, and has never been first-team All-Pro, nor has he ever gotten even a single MVP vote. That pretty much shoots down people who refer to him as a "generational" talent. But it doesn't take away from Wilson having been a pretty damn good QB.
I don't see how Wagner can be considered one of the top 30 players in the league for 2022. He's certainly (easily!) among the top 30 cases for the Hall of Fame among active players, but I don't expect him to be a top-30 performer in 2022. And while Wagner is ranked 29th, Fred Warner is ranked just 47th. Warner still has a long way to go to be considered a potential Hall of Fame inductee, while Wagner is obviously headed there, but if you ask me which one I'd rather have on my team in 2022, I think Warner wins.
I also don't see how Wilson can be ranked #61. That's just absurdly low. I might not put Wilson in the top 20 either, as some on .NET would (I can think of one who would put Wilson in the top five), but there's just no way he belongs down at #61. If Wilson had played a season for the Broncos, stayed healthy, and put up underwhelming numbers, I could understand putting him that low. But right now? He definitely belongs in the top 50, and probably
well into the top 50.
This may indeed be a matter of popularity. We know Wilson rubs some players the wrong way, so maybe some of them rank him lower than he deserves on their ballots. I think the Seahawks made the right move in trading Wilson, but I also expect Wilson to be
much better than the 61st-best player in the league this year, especially going to a team with a solid defense, a highly regarded offensive line, and a bunch of "weapons."
Similarly, people appear to like Wagner, and I think everyone respects how utterly great his career has been so far, so maybe a lot of players ranked Wagner very high because of how great he's been and because they like him, not basing their votes completely on how good they expect him to be in 2022. Or maybe they think that playing behind Aaron Donald and in front of Jalen Ramsey will help rejuvenate Wagner.
In any case, we consume these preseason rankings to try to satisfy our collective football jones (well,
I do, anyway), and so we end up giving this kind of ranking way too much attention (I just did!). I greatly look forward to the start of actual football games, and I'm glad that's just 16 days away, even though I really dislike Thursday-night games.
