K.J Wright can keep climbing up the Seahawks record books if he comes back next year

I’ll go ahead and give myself an L for believing the Seattle Seahawks should have cut K.J. Wright ahead of this season. Because money for, um, Jadeveon Clowney no particular reason at all seemed more worthwhile at the time.

Maybe he’s not fast enough, maybe he’s not strong enough, maybe he won’t be able to play the other side of the field.

Nah.

As it stands, 2018 has been Wright’s only bad year as a professional football player. It falsely and negatively affected many people’s perspective of him, and it has prevented him from sharing a franchise record.

Wright has been one-and-two with Bobby Wagner from virtually the day Wagner entered the league. Now, he’s just a couple dozen tackles short of being one-and-two on the all-time Seahawks tackle list.

Wright only registered 23 tackles in 2018 while playing just five games. That broke what would have been a six-year streak of 100 tackle seasons and would have already put him in second had he been healthy.

Eugene Robinson was a free safety, Joe Nash a tackle, while Keith Butler played the same linebacker position Wright has until this year. That already puts Wright atop the linebacker list besides Wagner. After 53 more tackles he’d be the number two all-time next to his friend and Super Bowl teammate.

That’s not reason enough to bring him back, but it is a reason.

But objectively, he’s earned it, the team should do it, and we’d get to see two of the greatest teammates celebrate something special next year if they do.

Interestingly for K.J. Wright, it’s a down year for him in terms of total tackles. But it may simultaneously be among his best seasons yet, if not the best.

Though tackle numbers are down, he’s already recorded his second-best career mark with 10 tackles for loss. It’s in large part because he remains the best devastator of the screen pass in the NFL, but he’s also as fundamentally sound as ever.

Wright is the same age (31) as Keith Butler’s final season, who finished fourth in franchise tackles. However I’ve seen not a solitary indication that a 32 year old Wright is a worse option than Cody Barton. Wright, Wagner, and Jordyn Brooks is the defense of today, and while I don’t know what kind of contract waters you wade into with Wright, it’s hopefully the defense of another year at least.