[Cavicchi]

Quote: Originally Posted by minotauri

Wagner has 114 total tackles. Sure 67 are solo but he's always involved in tackles in a defensive scheme where everyone pursues the ball carrier. The majority of the tackles the seahawks get are gang tackles. Look at the team's defensive stats as a whole. If you scroll through, you'll see that Wagner and KJ led the hawks but only had 71 and 67 SOLO tackles each yet both had 117 and 114 total tackles. Even more so, almost every player has about 30-40% of their tackles in combined tackles. Arizona's team stats are the complete opposite. The majority of each player's tackles are individual. I'm not saying that Arizona's defense is bad or anything, but the Seahawks have had statistically the best defense in the league in most major categories the past 4 years and Wagner is in my opinion the biggest reason why. That said, they are both great players and they probably do different things in different schemes but you can't just say solo tackles make a player better or not.

I consider solo tackles a good indicator of Tackle ability. That said, I don't see where Wagner should have a tackle rating of at least 10 points higher than Buchanan. Buchanan is faster than Wagner and excellent at tackling. You can look up Buchanan's Bio and see what he did in College as a safety.

I have watched Arizona games and I've watched Seahawk games, and I don't see Wagner's tackle ability 10 points higher than Buchanan. I don't see Wagner's tackle ability higher than Buchanan period. The only reason Buchanan gets the short end in this game is because he is rated Normal Development--and in this game, Development means an awful lot. In my opinion, Buchanan is way underrated in both tackle rating and Development.

Buchanan even has more sacks than Wagner: 3 to 0.5--which is amazing since he is a safety playing MLB.