Bobby Wagner just set a team record... that Jordyn Brooks is about to break.

Seattle Seahawks All Pro middle linebacker Bobby Wagner wrapped up a career year in the most unfortunate way... with what is likely a season-ending injury against the Detroit Lions in Week 17 on Sunday. Although the injury is relatively minor, per the team press release, it is still a very unfortunate thing to happen during a season where Wagner had set the franchise single-season tackle record by the 15th game of the season when he logged twelve against the Chicago Bears. Wagner technically started the following contest against the Detroit Lions, but failed to accumulate any statistics before going down with the aforementioned injury on the first snap of the game.

Even still, over the course of 2021 Wagner managed to top his own team record of 167 combined tackles in the regular season (circa 2016). This is obviously significant, as this is the first 17-game season on the books and a lot of records are about to become considerably more difficult to compare. That said, the fact that Wagner will only be credited with playing in sixteen games actually makes this record less inscrutable and more incredible.

However, it might not stand for very long at all. In fact, I am betting that it wont last another week, and I think that is a good bet.

Jordyn Brooks stands at third in the league right now with 165 combined tackles, according to ESPN. This puts him behind his teammate — the aforementioned Wagner — and Foyesade Oluokun of the Atlanta Falcons, who is pacing the league with an incredible 179 total tackles. Some rudimentary mental math indicates that Brooks needs only 5 tackles to tie, and 6 to top.

And according to Pro Football Reference, he has exactly one game of fewer than seven tackles all season long (that trash pile of an afternoon against the New Orleans Saints), and has otherwise pretty calmly averaged nearly a dozen tackles per game since the bye in Week 9. Thus, suffice to say the odds are in his favor to at the bare minimum surpass his teammate by a handful of tackles on the season.

Of course, the downside to this statistic is that tackles are just a counting stat, in most ways, similar to yardage for a running back; it ultimately doesn’t indicate a whole lot more than time on the field, which of course has plagued the defense all season long. But much like my recent review of Rashaad Penny’s streak of outstanding performances, Brooks deserves commendation for his work in a context of its own; that is, with little else left to root for as a Seattle fan in 2022, I am happy to see the emergence of some young leaders on this team who are living up to their draft status and keeping the games fun to watch on Sundays. And even if the team ultimately doesn’t resign Penny, we can still expect Brooks to be suiting up for the Hawks for at least a couple more seasons to come.

The fact that we are seeing two of the team’s former first round picks delivering at this point in their careers is exciting and at least indicates that maybe Pete Carroll and John Schneider have had a bit more success than we give them credit for with their recent first round selections. I said a little bit. Because now all we need is for L.J. Collier to begin his rapid ascent up the leader boards to top off this tricky trio of youngsters and then we can never criticize a JS draft pick ever again. Right?