A farewell to Bobby Wagner and Russell Wilson

I’ve known for a while that this time would come soon, but it doesn’t make goodbye any easier.

Amid the rumors, the noise, and what I often believed to be nonsense, I never believed this day would be this month, or even this year. But here we are, and I’m saying goodbye to both of you at once.

My opening may seem dramatic, but allow me to explain.

I’m a lifelong Seattle Seahawk fan, but I’ve been alive for just 20 years, 15 of which I can even vaguely remember. 10 of those have been spent watching you two.

Sure, I remember the dark days of the late 2010s, but I was barely able to understand football at the time, let alone engage with any of it in a critical or emotional manner. By the time the 2012 Draft rolled around, I was just beginning to understand the workings of the NFL, and boy was I thrilled about the Seahawks signing Matt Flynn. Things were going to keep getting better!

Of course, none of us truly knew how good things would be. And some of us, including myself (perhaps due to my age), lacked the foresight to understand just how lucky we were.

All the pain of you two leaving just hours apart from one another has given me the opportunity to reflect on what your time with the Seahawks has meant to me. As the day has gone on, I’ve realized: for better or worse, you are who I grew up with. Your successes and failures are, in many ways, how I mark milestones in my childhood. The way in which you are inseparable from some of the sweetest moments in my life is undeniable.

You won the Super Bowl on my twelfth birthday. You lost one day before my thirteenth. These and countless other moments in your careers together with this special team are how I keep track of time in my life, time which seems to be flying past me quicker every day. Of course, nothing is more reminiscent of the speed at which time passes than to say goodbye to you now, somehow ten years after you first began your Hall of Fame careers together.

Maybe my youth compared to so many of my fellow fans makes me lack a true understanding of just how much you have changed the luck of this franchise. Maybe I don’t even truly understand how much it will hurt this team when you are gone. But I do know this: you are two of my greatest childhood heroes, who shaped me in countless ways through the joy you brought me as players and the examples you set for me as role models. For that, I am eternally grateful.