Seattle Seahawks
The Seattle Seahawks just won their second Super Bowl championship with a 29-13 dismantling of the New England Patriots, and they did it the way they’ve done everything this year – led by defense and special teams, with a quarterback nobody trusted and a 38-year-old second-year head coach who’s still a mystery to most people outside the building.
“Loose and focused” – that’s been Mike Macdonald’s mantra since he took over. The Seahawks lived those words right through Sunday night.
We love each other. We’re constantly messing around, never taking ourselves too seriously; but when that whistle sounds and it’s between the white lines, that’s when it’s serious. When there’s work to be done, we go to work.
That quote comes from Seahawks safety Julian Love – whose name couldn’t be more perfect – and he backed it up with one of two fourth-quarter interceptions off Patriots quarterback Drake Maye that sealed the victory.
Seattle’s defense was absolutely dominant. Maye had been sacked five times in each of New England’s first three playoff games, and the Seahawks went one better by getting him six times in the Super Bowl. The Chargers, Texans, and Broncos all made Maye uncomfortable, but Seattle took it to another level entirely.
The Patriots offense never got into any kind of rhythm – the Seahawks’ defensive front came at Maye in waves, dictating how the game would go from start to finish.
Unselfish Football
Byron Murphy led the way with two sacks after posting seven in the regular season. But it’s the unlikely contributors that tell the real story here.
Derick Hall matched his regular-season sack total with two more Sunday. Fifth-round rookie Rylie Mills, who played in only four regular-season games and didn’t get a single sack in any of them, had one. And cornerback Devon Witherspoon – who was asked to blitz constantly – got one too.
That group up front, they knew they had to play the most unselfish game they’ve ever played. Someone was going to get a sack, and it didn’t matter who.
Seahawks defensive coordinator Aden Durde had his unit ready.
Witherspoon said they knew exactly what they were getting from film study. “Just from watching film and studying, we kind of knew how their tackles were going to set in pass protection, and we know they were kind of struggling this postseason,” he explained. “So we were going to attack them.”
Eight of the Patriots’ first nine possessions ended with a punt. The other was a kneel-down to close the first half. When the third quarter ended, New England had 78 yards of total offense and as many first downs – five – as the Seahawks had sacks.
Macdonald’s Masterclass
This was a triumph for Macdonald, who’s as good at dialing up pressures as any coach in the NFL. Love said the Seahawks were installing new plays as late as Saturday, which apparently isn’t unusual.
“He will game-plan up until whenever,” Seattle defensive lineman Leonard Williams said. “We’ll sometimes put a new play in Saturday morning. We’ll sometimes put a new play in Sunday at halftime. DeMarcus Lawrence says you have to have a Harvard education to play in this defense because you’re just constantly learning new stuff. But I think we trust Mike and his genius, and it works.”
The Seahawks weren’t supposed to be here – not according to the preseason hype, anyway. The Rams and 49ers got all the attention in the NFC West as the offensive powerhouses. As late as mid-December, it was Los Angeles being hailed as the Super Bowl favorites.
Seattle’s wild Week 16 comeback win over the Rams? Dismissed as fluky, even though it put the Seahawks in full control of the NFC playoff race.
Sam Darnold fought through doubts all season long. The Vikings let him walk after he led them to a 14-3 record in 2024, and Seattle grabbed him in free agency for $33.5 million per year – a reasonable deal that’s looking like highway robbery now.
He delivered a monster performance in the NFC Championship Game against the Rams, proving everyone wrong. Darnold struggled Sunday against New England’s aggressive defense, but he eventually beat the blitz with a fourth-quarter touchdown pass to AJ Barner that pushed Seattle’s lead to 19-0.
I didn’t have my best stuff today, but the team had my back. The defense and special teams had our back, and we just played the way we always play.
The Turning Point
Kenneth Walker III rushed for 135 yards on 27 carries and was named Super Bowl MVP – a well-deserved honor after carrying the load following Zach Charbonnet’s ACL tear in the divisional round against the 49ers.
“K-9 is special, man!” Love said. “Seeing how hard he works and the time he puts in and to see him win Super Bowl MVP, that’s just crazy.”
Walker couldn’t punch it in for a touchdown, which is why the score was only 12-0 late in the third quarter. But the fifth Seahawks sack – Hall’s second of the game – changed everything.
On third-and-6 from his own 44, Maye dropped back and found no one open, as was the case most of the night. Hall broke through to sack him and force Maye’s seventh fumble of the season – and his most costly. Murphy fell on it at New England’s 37-yard line.
Five plays later, Darnold beat an all-out blitz and found Barner wide open in the end zone for the game’s first touchdown.
“Just sticking with what we do, what we’ve done all year,” Williams said. “We told ourselves, ‘All we have to do is be us, but we have to be us.’ And that’s what we did. When we have guys filling their roles to the best of their ability, we can’t be stopped.”
Punter Michael Dickson deserves mention too – Seattle’s special teams were crucial all season, and Sunday was all about field position and field goals.
Culture Wins Championships
It might not have been the prettiest Super Bowl, but the Seahawks – to paraphrase their coach’s one truly viral moment – do not care.
This franchise traded away its previous two starting quarterbacks when they wanted more money than Seattle was willing to offer, then pivoted to Darnold. They moved on from Pete Carroll, a legendary Super Bowl-winning coach, after 11 winning seasons in 12 years because they felt they needed fresh defensive ideas to keep up with the high-powered offenses in their division.
The Seahawks believe in their culture, their roster-building principles, and their ability to scout talent in the draft. All of that was on display Sunday.
So this was an affirmation for general manager John Schneider and his front office, which aggressively pursued Macdonald two years ago. And it was validation for Macdonald, the young defensive genius whose “loose and focused” mantra builds on what Carroll established but evolves it into something new.
Macdonald told his team in the offseason that it was getting in on the ground floor of a new program and that it had to “become” the type of team that could win the biggest games.
“Loose and focused” is how they went about it. It’s a phrase they use constantly around the building, where competitive shadowboxing took over the locker room at some point this season. Players use words like “love” and “brotherhood” when talking about how they came together around Macdonald’s message.
It takes leadership being OK with ‘loose and focused.’ Not every coach is going to enjoy us standing on the side on a walk-through shadowboxing or messing around. But this staff and the leaders on this team understand that when the horn blows, if guys are dialed in on the details, then it’s OK. You don’t have to be in control of everything a player does every day.
The Seahawks trailed for only 1 minute, 35 seconds this entire postseason – the fifth-least amount of time trailing by any Super Bowl champion since the 1970 merger. Only four teams never trailed at all during their championship runs: the 1991 Washington team, the 1977 Cowboys, the 1973 Dolphins, and the 1971 Cowboys.
Macdonald’s defensive expertise and culture-building were rewarded Sunday evening with a Super Bowl title that validated everything about how the Seahawks operate. They’d gone 12 years between championships, but they always stayed competitive and never lost sight of who they were.
Even showing up in the Super Bowl – a first for the vast majority of the roster – didn’t rattle them.
“I think that’s been an edge for us all season,” Macdonald said Wednesday. “Every time we’ve gone into a new experience together, knowing that we have principles that we want to abide by and those are kind of our guiding lights in terms of how we want to operate and make our decisions. At some point, you’re going to get distracted, and that’s OK, but it’s about how relentless can we be in coming back to center, back to being in this moment.”
The result is a moment that’ll live in franchise and NFL history forever.
Loose. Focused. Champions.
