SEATTLE — Monday morning’s news that Russell Wilson’s football career may be over as he reportedly heads to a new job in TV with CBS Sports creates an interesting future possibility for Seahawks fans — the sight of Wilson and Bobby Wagner entering the Pro Football Hall of Fame together five years from now.

That assumes, of course, that neither plays again, which remains unclear.

The reports that Wilson is close to an agreement to join CBS’s NFL Today pregame show stated he is not officially retiring but for the moment set to “take a pause on his career to pursue TV. Logically, if Wilson indeed signs a multiyear and multimillion deal with CBS, his playing career is probably done.

Wagner has not announced his retirement and said at the end of last season he hopes to continue to play. But he turns 36 later this month and has yet to sign with another team after his contract with Washington expired in March.

That could put Wilson and Wagner — members of the Seahawks' famed 2012 draft class that put the finishing touches on the first Super Bowl-winning team in franchise history a year later — on course to be members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame class of 2031.

That assumes that each makes it and does so on the first ballot.

For Wagner there appears little doubt.

He has the third-most tackles in NFL history, getting to exactly 2,000 at the end of last season. He was named a first-team All-Pro six times, tied for third most of any inside linebacker in NFL history behind only Ray Lewis and Mike Singletary, ahead of greats such as Dick Butkus and Luke Kuechly and Nick Buoniconti.

Wilson is another matter.

Longtime NFL writer Frank Schwab of Yahoo Sports summarized well what appears to be the consensus view of Wilson’s Hall of Fame chances shortly after Monday’s news broke.

As Schwab wrote, Wilson seemed a certain Hall of Famer at the moment he was traded by Seattle to Denver in March 2022 after 10 years with the Seahawks.

But four rocky seasons since that included just one playoff appearance that resulted in a decisive loss may have changed the equation.

“Those final four years were bad enough that a player who looked like a sure Pro Football Hall of Famer might not be anymore," Schwab wrote.

What won’t help are the changes made to the Hall of Fame voting process in 2025. Those were made in reaction to the thought that it was becoming too easy to get in — one of the first casualties of that process was former Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren, who undoubtedly would have gotten in under the old format but instead was left out in 2025.

And so far, the Legion of Boom-era Seahawks haven’t gotten much HOF traction.

Earl Thomas has been a semifinalist the last two years (meaning, making it to a group of 25) but hasn’t gotten closer. Marshawn Lynch, eligible the past two years, has made it to the semifinalist stage once but no closer.

Richard Sherman is eligible for the first time this year and many consider him a possible first-ballot HOF. But the new format could make it more difficult for Sherman to get in among an already crowded class of first-time nominees that also includes Ben Roethlisberger, Rob Gronkowksi and Adrian Peterson.

The case for Wilson?

Despite the rocky last four seasons he remains among the NFL career leaders in numerous passing categories that measure quantity and quality.

He’s fifth in passer rating (99.3), 12th in passing touchdowns (353), tied for fourth in Pro Football Reference’s adjusted yards per pass attempt (7.99), tied for ninth in interception rate (1.9) and ninth in fourth-quarter comebacks (32), to name a few.

He’s also 129th in all-time rushing yards and fourth among quarterbacks with 5,568 — evidence of a mobility that may have been more important to the Seahawks' running-game success in those years than many want to admit — and has the seventh-best yards-per-carry average of any player at 5.3.

The case against Wilson?

That he only won one Super Bowl — Eli Manning and Jim Plunkett each won two and have yet to get in; that he was carried in his early years by the LOB defense and Lynch-led running game and was mostly a “game manager" in those seasons; that he won only one more playoff game after the defense began to come apart following the 2017 season; that he never got an MVP vote or was named a first-team All-Pro; and that the Denver/Pittsburgh/Giants years show he was mostly a product of Pete Carroll and the Seahawks system.

Pro Football Reference’s Hall of Fame monitor rankings has Wilson solidly in. Wilson has a rating of 94.82, ahead of the likes of HOFers such as Roger Staubach, Kurt Warner and Dan Fouts as well as contemporaries such as Manning and Cam Newton.

Wilson is also 23rd on Pro Football Reference’s approximate value career list at 191, a rating devised by the football website to try to give a one-number-fits-all rating for all players regardless of position.

That’s the best of any player from the LOB-era Seahawks, just above Wagner, who is tied for 26th at 180.

Every player above Wilson is a recently retired quarterback who may eventually get in the Hall of Fame — Tom Brady (first), Philip Rivers (11th), Matt Ryan (14th) and Roethlisberger (15th).

As Schwab noted Monday, Wilson was named to nine Pro Bowls, one of 12 QBs to make it that many times or more.

The other 11 are all in the HOF other than Brady and Aaron Rodgers, who will be.

The view here is that the “game manager" tag many applied to Wilson in the early years was made by those who didn’t watch him play every week.

What part of “game manager" was the play in the 2013 NFC title game when on a second-and-seven and the 49ers ahead 10-0, Wilson spun away from a rush and then let loose from his own 25 to find Doug Baldwin open at the opposing 18 — a 57-yard rope — setting up a field goal that allowed the Seahawks to cut San Francisco’s lead to 10-3 and begin to turn the tide? What part of “game manager was his 35-yard TD to Jermaine Kearse on a fourth-and-seven that won the game in the fourth quarter?

Wilson didn’t stick the landing to his NFL career, but what he did for 10 years in Seattle should be enough to someday land him in Canton.

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