When the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots met in Super Bowl LX in February, the teams engaged in a defensive struggle as the Seahawks emerged as NFL champs with a 29-13 win.
Eight months later, some faces had changed, but the result was the same as the Seahawks escaped with a 13-10 win in the 2026 season opener. The Seahawks defense showed it hadn’t missed a beat, picking off New England quarterback Drake Maye three times and allowing Seattle to rally from a 10-0 deficit to get the win.
The Seahawks lost quarterback Sam Darnold to a hip injury just five plays into the game, leaving backup quarterback Drew Lock to work with new offensive coordinator Brian Fleury for the rest of the game.
If Darnold misses extended time, the Lock-Fleury relationship is going to need to improve if the Seahawks are going to keep winning.
Just one game into the season, the NFC West race is already scrambled. The starting quarterback of the team that won the division and the Super Bowl last year is out for an undetermined amount of time. The Los Angeles Rams, who were preseason favorites to roll to the Super Bowl this season, instead found themselves being walloped by the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne in the second game of the new NFL season.
The projected top three teams in the NFC West now all have one game under their belts, and those games may reveal everything, or nothing at all, about the rest of the season. Here’s what we’ve learned so far:
• The Seahawks defense is here to stay. The unit that got the team to the Super Bowl last year suffered relatively little turnover in the offseason. The Patriots were one of the few teams to have a potential formula to beat them: a big, mobile quarterback, a tough running back, and an upgraded wide receiver corps. It didn’t matter. Once the Seahawks adapted to the Patriots’ wrinkle of having Maye scramble up the middle against over-pursuing defensive linemen, the Patriots offense was dead in the water. They picked off one of the league’s top young quarterbacks three times in the fourth quarter, including a game-sealer off an inexplicable heave into the end zone with 20 seconds left when New England was already in range of a tying field goal attempt.
• The Seahawks offense is going to have to pick up the pace. Lock was routinely checking his play sheet or breaking the huddle deep into the play clock. The Seahawks received several delay-of-game penalties and could have fairly been whistled for more. One such penalty came on second-and-one at the New England three-yard line with an opportunity to put the Seahawks up seven. The team then ran two more hurried plays before settling for a field goal.
• The Seahawks appear to have a gem in first-round running back Jadarian Price. The team kept the rookie’s training wheels on against the Patriots as he logged just 10 carries for 52 yards while giving eight carries to backup George Holani. That dynamic will have to change, particularly if Darnold remains out for a significant length of time. Price did significantly more with his carries than Holani did with his, and the team will need to turn him loose in order to give Lock a chance to succeed.
• There’s never a good time to lose a starting quarterback, but the Seahawks probably found the least bad one.The team has a week and a half before it takes on the rebuilding Arizona Cardinals, giving the offense plenty of time to adjust to having Lock under center. They do not play another divisional game until October 11, when they face the 49ers. When the stakes ramp up, they should have most of the offensive wrinkles sorted out and, hopefully, have Darnold back.
• The Rams, the offseason darlings, are not going to be able to just waltz to the Super Bowl. The 49ers offense took the Rams’ vaunted defense apart, and Los Angeles finds itself in a one-game hole early in the division standings. That may not mean much in the long run, as the Seahawks and Rams do not meet in the regular season until Christmas Day, and then play again two weeks later in the regular-season finale, but for now the Rams are looking up at both of their rivals in the standings.
• While the Seahawks dodged an international game this year, if they need to travel across an ocean in the future, they, along with any other team, probably won’t emulate the Rams’ decision this year. San Francisco traveled to Australia early to adjust to the time change and get ready, while the Rams did not travel until just before the game, attempting to play without adjusting to the massive time difference. Given the 27-7 final score and the 49ers’ dominance throughout, San Francisco certainly had the better strategy this time around.
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