The last time Seattle played a real game was on February 8th, when they defeated the New England Patriots 29-13 in the Super Bowl. The game was not as close as the final score indicated, as the Patriots struggled for most of the game to do anything on offense, and their defense just barely kept Seattle from scoring a few more times. Patriots (and former Oregon Duck) cornerback Christian Gonzalez personally stopped three separate Seattle touchdowns with just his fingertips. If he didn’t play the game of his life on the biggest stage, Seattle could have easily scored three more times, if not more.
Be Kind Rewind
Rewatching the game this week, one thing was clear: Seattle QB Sam Darnold played a severely underrated game in the biggest moment of his career, while Patriots QB Drake Maye played terribly. No disrespect to the Seattle pass rush, they played incredibly. They got into Maye’s face early and were living rent-free in his head for most of the game. But Maye also did not do himself or his team any favors.
Seattle RB Kenneth Walker III won Super Bowl MVP for a great rushing performance, but without Darnold playing insanely well given the amount of pressure he faced every time he dropped back to pass, I’m not sure Seattle wins this game. It was easy to give Walker the MVP for his stats and big plays, but Darnold would have easily won MVP if one or even two of the plays Gonzalez put a stop to were completed (more on that later). Darnold played well above what the final stats indicated (just 200 yards on 38 attempts and one touchdown), so it was easy to give the award to Walker, who finished with 135 rushing yards on 27 carries and left no doubt, while Darnold arguably left some plays on the field. Walker played out of his mind on the biggest stage and definitely deserved the award, but Darnold played much better than I think most people ultimately saw.
Both QBs were pressured on nearly every dropback, and both defenses regularly sent multiple blitzers, which confused both offensive lines as to who was going to be blocked and who wasn’t. This meant the QB had to make a quick choice on each pass attempt: get hit and throw a good ball on time to the receiver, or get hit and throw a bad ball early. Either way, you’re going to get hit, so wouldn’t you want to win if you have to get hit? Apparently, that was not everyone’s view that particular Sunday.
Darnold repeatedly chose to throw a good ball and then get annihilated, while Maye was often early and off-target with a rushed pass, and then still had to be peeled off the turf. Seattle’s defense was in Maye’s face and on him all evening, but the Patriots were in Darnold’s face just as much. The difference in the game is that Darnold found ways to keep drives alive while Maye missed his target on a regular basis. Both QBs were constantly hit or at least pressured, but one of them made a choice to help his team while the other made a constant choice to save himself. I can’t say if it was coaching on either side, but one guy clearly made a choice to be “the dude” in critical moments, while his counterpart lived with being just another guy. And it certainly showed up on the tape. When plays went poorly, Maye looked like a kid pouting. When the same thing happened to Darnold, he looked like he knew how close he was and just wanted one more crack at it. Darnold has certainly had times in his career where he looked like he was just another guy, but in this game he looked like an elite competitor. I suppose we will have to see what Maye looks like six years from now.
Another thing I noticed on the rewatch was how often the Patriots had a guy open and Maye was off-target with the pass, or the Seattle defender closed so quickly that the receiver had little time to do anything once they got the ball. Even at times when Maye had good protection and time to throw a good ball, the ghosts of previous plays were clearly making him think he needed the ball to come out before it did. The couple of times Maye tried to test Seattle with a deep pass, it was broken up or intercepted.
New England came into the game with one of the top offenses in the league and one of the most balanced attacks. But by the end of the game, they looked like they didn’t deserve to be on the same field with the Seahawks.
In their three previous playoff games, the Patriots showed incredible balance with their playcalling, rushing at least 30 times in each contest. Against Seattle and their insane pass rush? They called 13 running plays to 48 pass plays. Maye rushed five times on those pass plays, so if you want to be generous, you can call it 18 and 43, which is still insanely lopsided. Commentators Mike Tirico and Chris Collinsworth routinely called out the disparity in rushing attempts between the two teams, with Seattle sticking to a balanced game plan while New England just kept trying to force passes despite nothing working on that side of their attack. Patriots running backs weren’t getting stuffed at the line either. They were picking up at least three or four yards each time. It really made no sense why they stuck to a game plan that clearly wasn’t working.
The lack of rushing plays, along with the fact that the rookie offensive linemen on the Patriots were routinely getting destroyed by Seattle’s pass rush, makes you wonder why New England OC Josh McDaniels kept calling pass plays that had no hope of working against a defense expecting them to throw. He knows the best way to protect a young QB against a pass rush is to slow it down by running right at them and making them guess what will happen next. The worst thing you can do for a young QB with a bad offensive line against a great pass rush is to force passing plays all night against a defense daring you to run. I think Seattle likely wins regardless, but I was routinely baffled at how many times the Patriots made the game look easy for Seattle when they could have made it difficult. The Patriots defense played really well against one of the league’s best offenses, but it didn’t matter at all because the offense did nothing when it mattered.
Back To The Future
Seven months have now passed since that game, and both teams have made a few interesting changes.
Seattle OC Klint Kubiak took the head coaching job with Las Vegas, and his replacement, Brian Fleury, is a well-known talent in the Shanahan coaching system. Fleury has not called plays at the professional level before, but he has seen how the best do it up close, so we can’t just assume he will struggle. First-time play callers have succeeded before, but they have also struggled with the nuances of making an offense work on game day, especially with simple things like how often to throw pre-snap motion into the plan, as well as moving players around the formation to keep the defense guessing. New England has a very good defense, so this will be an interesting test for a rookie 49-year-old play caller.
Seattle had a couple of key subtractions to their roster, the most crucial ones being Walker III signing with Kansas City and defensive back Coby Bryant signing with Chicago. Reserve defensive end Boye Mafe signed with Cincinnati, and nickel corner Tariq Woolen signed with Philadelphia. Woolen made as many bad plays as good ones, so you would hope a more consistent player will be a step in the right direction, but Seattle signing multiple reserve cornerbacks to their roster this summer makes me wonder how confident they are at that position. Bryant was a big loss on his own, but second-year safety Nick Emmanwori is currently working his way back from ankle surgery, which leaves Seattle with Julian Love, Devon Witherspoon, and Josh Jobe as returning starters in the secondary for Week 1. Seattle head coach and defensive play caller Mike Macdonald is extremely gifted at scheming against individual opponents to get the most out of the healthy players he has, but it will be a concern to have so little depth in the defensive backfield. The front seven will have to be at their best if they want to get out with a win in this game, but they dropped their opener last year, so I won’t put too much stock in this game regardless of the outcome.
Walker III split time at RB with Zach Charbonnet last season, but Charbonnet is working his way back from tearing his ACL in the playoffs, so first-round pick Jadarian Price will likely see the bulk of the Week 1 carries, with help from seldom-used third-stringer George Holani.
A new play caller on offense, a new starting RB, and a concerning lack of depth in the secondary could be an interesting twist in Week 1, but Seattle has a lot of star power on both sides of the ball, so I would imagine they can find ways to win.
New England made a few changes to their roster as well. They clearly thought their receiver room needed improvement, so they traded their 2028 first-round pick to Philadelphia for receiver AJ Brown and signed former Green Bay receiver Romeo Doubs. They let Stefon Diggs sign with Washington and traded Kayshon Boutte to Houston. On defense, they signed safety Kevin Byard, and safety Jaylen Reed was sent to them in the deal for Boutte. They were already deep at corner and linebacker, so it makes sense they focused on making it tougher to throw deep and brought in Byard, who led the league with seven interceptions in 2025. With Brown likely forcing defenses like Seattle to cover him with more than one defender and Doubs catching passes one-on-one, they could look even better this season, which should scare a lot of defenses that already had trouble with them last season.
Many fans pointed to the Patriots’ easy schedule last year and called them frauds, and the fact they did not have to face the Bills in the playoffs and played the Broncos with a reserve QB in a blizzard did not help their case. But they won decisively against really good teams in the Chargers and Texans, so they had the chance to blow it once they played only elite teams and didn’t. Their defense was elite, and whether their offense was or not is fair to question since they played very conservatively in the playoffs (other than the Super Bowl). While they didn’t do much to help their offensive line this summer, they will definitely be better at receiver, and their defense could be even better with the added help at safety.
The Season Kicks Off Tonight!
It’s been a weird year in a weird decade, so why not start the season on a Wednesday? The game tonight is being billed as a Super Bowl rematch, but there’s not much on the line, to be honest, so it won’t have that much riding on every play like the previous game they played. Neither team will define their season based on this game. It’s not against a conference opponent, so it won’t impact playoff seeding, and both teams are working out kinks with new faces at key spots, so a win would be nice, but more than that, they just want to go out there and play well. I’m certain that both head coaches would prefer to start their season off with a victory, but one loss in an 18-week season doesn’t mean much, especially this early.
The Patriots will likely have a much more balanced attack, but they will probably want to test the weakened part of the Seattle secondary as often as possible while still giving their young QB time to go through his reads and not having to fire off passes as soon as someone looks like they might get open. Running the ball and incorporating play-action passes could throw off the defense just enough, but it will only be for a moment, so they will need to capitalize on big plays when they are available.
McDaniels will have his work cut out for him against Macdonald, and both guys have an entire game of film against each other to dissect and see what they can use as an advantage this time around that may not have been clear in previous tape. I would guess McDaniels has spent the better part of the last several days asking the defensive coaches to pressure the hell out of Maye in practice to get him used to making his reads in a blender and preparing him for the battle ahead. Seattle uses a lot of disguised looks and sends different guys on blitzes, but then will drop seven and still get pressure with four. You just can’t guess correctly most of the time against them. Brown and Doubs are both great at getting open in tight coverage, so as long as Maye has time to get the ball in the air, there is a better chance they will move the chains more often in this game.
Seattle will have to trust new OC Fleury to call the right plays at the right time, and hopefully they can get Jaxon Smith-Njigba more involved this time around, as he had just four catches for 27 yards in the Super Bowl. A rookie OC and a rookie RB are not a great combination for the first week against an elite defense, but Seattle has plenty of veteran talent to help coach the young players and tell their new play caller what they like to run and in what situations. The best play callers lean on their best players to tell them what they think will work in crucial situations, so if the offense gets in a “have to have it” play, they should have no problem telling Fleury what plays they want to be offered.
The truth is that Kubiak will be a tough act to follow even if he only spent a year in Seattle. He called a great game in the Super Bowl and could have had his hands on a blowout if not for a couple of plays going differently than expected.
JSN was this close to catching a touchdown, and that was one of the few times Gonzalez managed to thwart Seattle. Darnold had three separate throws to JSN, Cooper Kupp, and Rashid Shaheed that were centimeters away from being caught, and at least two of them would have been touchdowns if they were hauled in. You guessed it, Gonzalez was the closest defender all three times. The throw to JSN was at the goal line and was for sure a touchdown. The other two were less certain to be scores, but one of them likely would have made it given the separation the receiver had at the time.
A 300-yard game with three touchdowns (maybe even four) for Darnold would be impossible to ignore when MVP votes were counted. That’s how close this game was to being blown wide open and just barely kept within arm’s reach for the Patriots. If even one of those plays goes differently, this game is not even close. But it’s like the missed shot Gordon Bombay likes to whine about in the first entry of the Mighty Ducks series. He says that a quarter of an inch is all that separated him from a game-winning shot in the Pee Wee Hockey Championship. But his star player Charlie Conway is quick to point out that if the shot had gone just a quarter of an inch the other way, he would have missed entirely. There are for sure other plays that could have tipped the game in the Patriots’ favor if they had gone differently, so I suppose we will have to live with the game we got and not the game we “could have had.”
Prediction
As good as the Patriots defense was last season, Seattle’s was better, and they had the better offense to go with it. I think Seattle wins tonight, but it will likely be a higher-scoring and more exciting game. The Super Bowl was fun, but it was a slow and low-scoring game for the majority of it. 29-13 sounds fun in theory, but then you remember it was 9-0 at halftime and 12-0 going into the fourth. The fourth quarter was the most exciting part of the game, as the teams combined for a 17-13 final frame, and the Patriots had to go into desperation mode to even get to 13. That was after they had to watch Seattle score a touchdown on defense. This game should be more of an offensive showcase, but there will still be big plays on defense for both teams.
I see Seattle winning this game, but they probably won’t be ahead for the entire game like the last time. I can see them going into the fourth trailing by more than they would like before two late scores seal it. Seattle has to endure a game that reminds a lot of nervous fans of their games against the Rams last season, but like two of those, they will win (we can all now forget about the one missed field goal in the first game that Seattle could have won and swept the Rams, that would have been fun).
Seahawks win 38-34.
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