RENTON — Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman and safety Earl Thomas earned Associated Press first-team All-Pro for the third straight year Friday, while linebacker Bobby Wagner earned his first All-Pro honors as a first-team pick at middle linebacker.
Safety Kam Chancellor earned second-team honors for the second year in a row, while Marshawn Lynch was named second-team at running back, giving the Seahawks five All-Pro selections for the first time in franchise history.
Wagner’s selection, despite missing five games with a turf toe injury, shows just how well he played this season, and particularly over the final six games after returning from a toe injury. After Wagner came back, the Seahawks went on a six-game winning streak, allowing just 6.5 points-per-game over that span.
“It means a lot to me,” Wagner told the Associated Press. “I know I’m not really about awards and stuff like that, but to get the recognition that I feel like I deserve is huge for me because I feel like I’ve been playing well since I’ve came to the league. I’m on such a great defense that sometimes there are guys that get overlooked and unfortunately I was one of them.
“But I think all the things that has happened this year as far as the awards and the recognition and stuff like that it means so much more to me this year because everything that I went through this year.”
Despite missing much of the preseason with a hamstring injury, Wagner was enjoying the best season of his three-year career heading into Seattle’s Week 6 game against Dallas. But late in the first half of the eventual loss, he tore the tendon that attaches the big toe to the ball of the foot while also fracturing a bone in his foot.
After a five-week absence, however, Wagner came back playing as well as he had before the injury, playing a huge role in Seattle’s late-season turnaround.
“Starting off the year good, getting hurt, having to watch, having to be in the cast — I hadn’t been in a cast since I was a little kid — having to be in a cast and then riding around on that little scooter and then rehabbing, and missing the preseason basically because of my hamstring,” Wagner said. “To still keep my mind right and work through all that stuff and still get the recognition I felt like I deserve just means a lot.”
While Seattle’s five All-Pro selections are a franchise high, they have twice had more first-teamers with four in both 2005 and 2012. Most players consider All-Pro selections as more significant than Pro Bowl since fewer players are selected, with 12 on each side of the ball earning first-team honors.
With Sherman, Thomas and Chancellor all earning All-Pro honors, it marks the fourth time since the AP added a second-team in 1972 that one team has had three defensive backs named All-Pro, the others being the 1995 San Francisco 49ers, the 2002 Philadelphia Eagles and last year’s Seahawks. And it’s worth noting that Seahawks coach Pete Carroll was the defensive coordinator of those ‘95 ‘Niners.
Sherman and Thomas were both first-team selections for a third straight year even though their numbers were down — each had four fewer interceptions than the year before, with Sherman finishing with four and Thomas one — a sign that voters recognized the strong overall play of Seattle’s defense, as well as the fact that most teams simply stopped testing two of the game’s best defensive backs.
“I think they’re recognizing impact,” Sherman told the AP. “I think they’re recognizing what our defensive numbers are doing, what we’re doing as a whole as a defense. That goes to Earl Thomas and Bobby Wagner as well. I think people are starting to understand you don’t’ get the historical numbers that we’ve gotten without great players and that should lead to more recognition for other players as well: Mike Bennett, Cliff Avril, KJ Wright, Kam Chancellor.
“I think when you play at such a high level that you’re not always going to get the big numbers because it’s spread out so evenly. Not a lot of people are going to challenge my side of the field a lot of times. They’re not going to challenge Earl Thomas in the middle of the field. Bobby Wagner is not going to have 150 tackles, 10, 15 yards down the field because we’re not going to allow those plays to happen. We lead the league in the least explosive plays and I think that all has something to do with our numbers being eschewed and being lower than a lot of other teams.”
Thomas was the top vote getter at safety with 39 of 50 possible votes, while Sherman was second to New England’s Darrelle Revis at cornerback (42 to 41). Chancellor narrowly missed making it a Seattle safety sweep on the first-team defense, finishing with 14 votes, while San Diego’s Eric Weddle had 16. Wagner was second in middle linebacker voting with 31 votes, 12 fewer than Carolina’s Luke Kuechly. Lynch received seven votes at running back, and was the only running back named on the ballots other than the two first-teamers, Dallas’ DeMarco Murray and Pittsburgh’s Le’Veon Bell.
Two other Seahawks received votes, Michael Bennett finishing sixth in defensive end voting with three votes, while James Carpenter got a somewhat surprising single vote at guard. In addition to his votes at running back, Lynch was named once as a fullback, presumably by a voter who preferred to name three running backs rather than two running backs and one fullback.
Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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