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Watching Bobby Wagner play, the first thing you might notice is his speed. That swiftness, once clocked at sub-4.5 seconds in the 40-yard dash, makes him a sideline-to-sideline nightmare for running backs and once prompted the venerable Frank Gore to say, “Bobby, man, he’s f------ fast as f--.” But the Seahawks’ middle linebacker—who has surpassed 100 tackles in each of his five NFL seasons, and last year made a franchise-record 167 stops—views his athletic ability as a mere complement to the most important aspect of his game. “Ninety percent,” Wagner says, “is mental.”. Wagner is the Seahawks’ defensive signal-caller, the guy in the middle of a defense that has been the NFL’s stingiest, in terms of points allowed, in four out of the past five seasons. (In their outlier season, 2016, the Seahawks finished third.) Seattle’s defensive scheme is often described as relatively simple, as the unit plays mainly Cover 3 zone (first and second downs) or man-to-man (third downs). But what each player does on the field is much more complicated than those schemes might suggest.

This is Smarter Football Week at The MMQB, in which we’re spotlighting the mental side of the game and what often goes unnoticed to the naked eye. Quarterback might be the only position on the field that gets due credit for the brainpower that goes into making plays. So we set out to understand the mental process of a non-quarterback who, if you will, has a Ph.D. In the sport. Torrent Boardwalk Empire Season 2 Episode 1 there.

As we solicited suggestions among players and coaches, Wagner’s name kept coming up. “The game is more mental than physical,” Wagner, a three-time All-Pro, says. Free Burn Fat Feed Muscle Recipes. “There are guys out there that run 6.0-second 40s but beat guys that run a 4.2 to the ball every play. It’s because they do so much film study, to the point where they know where the play is going, or have an educated guess.” It’s a prerequisite of Wagner’s position to know where everyone needs to line up and what their responsibilities are. The defensive call from coordinator Kris Richard comes in through his helmet radio, and he communicates it to the 10 other defenders on the field. Wagner then stands at the front of the huddle. He watches how the offense lines up, starting with where the tight end is, which determines the strong and weak sides of the formation.

It’s Wagner’s responsibility to set the defensive front, which means aligning the defensive linemen and linebackers with the correct gaps and shading in relation to the offensive front. But this is just where his job starts. Otto Greule Jr./Getty Images Wagner, a second-round draft pick in 2012, has been a full-time starter for the Seahawks since his rookie season. Early on, he was consumed with learning the defensive playbook and the weekly game plan constructed by the coaches.

Once that became second nature, he was freed up to study what opposing offenses are trying to do against Seattle’s defense. From there, he could start to develop what some defensive coordinators like to call an individual game plan within the team’s game plan. Based on film study and accrued experiences, Wagner has a library of tendencies and tells that informs when and how he can make the big plays that stand out on highlight reels. “The more and more you play in this league, you just kind of know what to look at,” Wagner says. Consider Seattle’s Week 6 win over the Falcons last season.