The Seattle Seahawks had an exceptional secondary last season. Then they lost Coby Bryant and Riq Woolen in the offseason. No matter, the 12s said. We still have amazing talent in the defensive backfield. Then rookie Bud Clark was lost for the season. No problem, said the 12s. We have a lot of safeties.
That was the case until Mike Macdonald announced that starters Nick Emmanwori and Ty Okada would miss the 2026 opener against the reigning AFC champion New England Patriots.
The Pats now have A.J. Brown and Romeo Doubs providing Drake Maye with legit firepower on the outside. The New England Patriots have a reshuffled offensive line that would show marked improvement over the unit that was overwhelmed in the Super Bowl.
Four takeaways from the Seattle Seahawks' opening night win over New England
On paper, there was no way the Seattle defense could once again dominate the game. But this is the Dark Side, heirs of the Legion of Boom. This is Mike Macdonald and Leslie Frasier and Aden Durde’s baby.
I’m sorry if these takeaways are not earth-shattering. There may have been a surprise or two, but one of the problems with a team as fundamentally sound and exceptionally skilled as these Seahawks is that there may not be too many surprises. You may even get bored if you don’t like winning.
This defense is the best in the league
I realize Houston has an excellent defense. I am willing to allow that by the end of the year, I might rank the Texans as the best. But not today. Today, it’s Seattle.
Playing without their QB against a very good Patriots team, the Dark Side again won the game. OK – perhaps it was not as dominant as it had been in the Super Bowl. They gave up some big plays, missed some tackles. But consider this. The Seattle defense – missing all those players – held New England to fewer points (10) and fewer yards (277) than they did in the Super Bowl.
They did it when it mattered most. Through three quarters … zero sacks and zero interceptions. In the fourth quarter, two sacks and three interceptions. They rose to the occasion when they had to. And if you had Nehemiah Pritchett as one of the players who would turn the game around, congrats. You are far wiser than I.
JSN’s 2025 season was not a fluke
This one is almost as obvious as the note about the defense. But Jaxon Smith-Njigba has a flair for the dramatic. With Seattle in desperate need of a big play, and without his starting quarterback available, he delivered the team’s lone touchdown that tied the game.
He did it on a fourth-down short dump-off. He ran about five yards, settled into a soft spot in New England’s zone, and then dashed past half of the Patriots' defense for the score.
In 2017, Tyreek Hill scored one of the most remarkable touchdowns I have ever seen against Dallas when he took a short cross on the final play of the first half and simply ran around and past the entire Cowboys defense to the end zone. The Cowboys knew it was coming, and they were helpless to stop the play.
I had visions of that while watching JSN. It was as if he had a force field around him. The Patriots could neither cover him nor tackle him. Seattle’s other backs and receivers combined for 175 total yards running and catching in the game.
JSN has 122 all by himself. Seattle desperately needs to develop other options on offense, but it is nice to know that when they need a play, they have one of the league’s best playmakers able to come through.
This is why the Seahawks' QB situation is better than most experts think
As the start of the season approached, anyone who talks or writes about football put out rankings. The sexiest position to rank, of course, is quarterback. Every QB ranking I saw had New England ranked ahead of Seattle because of the common perception that Drake Maye is better than Sam Darnold.
I won’t dispute that notion, although Maye was downright awful in the fourth quarter. Maye is an excellent quarterback who should only get better with painful experiences like this under his belt. But those rankings miss the fact that Drew Lock is among the best backup QBs in the league. He would not be considered a top-16 starter, but he could certainly start for some NFL teams and do a serviceable job.
That is exactly what he did on Wednesday. He made some mistakes, but considering he was thrust into the game early and that he was working with an offensive coordinator who had never called plays before, he did an admirable job. Seattle obviously needs Sam Darnold back and healthy, but they can win a lot of games with Lock, as long as they have this defense and Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
Do you think New England would have done as well had Drake Maye been the one to exit in the first quarter? Before you answer, let me remind you that Maye’s backup is Tommy DeVito.
The pressure is real
In a pep talk given by Mike Macdonald to his team in HBO’s Hard Knocks series, the coach outlines the team’s basic approach. They apply pressure. It is there on the first play. It remains throughout the game. It never lets up. When Seattle sees a crack – scores a touchdown and gets a turnover – that only means that they crank the pressure up even higher.
By making every single play a challenge, it wears down an opponent. A lot of teams have great players. But few can match Seattle’s depth and versatility. It is very hard to stay with a team like that for sixty minutes.
Wednesday provided a textbook example of how that works. How could Drake Maye make so many poor plays at key moments in the fourth quarter? That pressure got to him. Like a boxer working the body for ten rounds, when Seattle is at their best, it is hard for anyone to keep up with them, for an entire game.
Add us as a preferred source on Google