I’m sat in my hotel room plotting out what my final day will be like in California before my flight home at 5pm. I’ll probably go and see the Golden Gate Bridge and play it by ear. Then it’s 11 hours all the way back to the UK.
I’m anticipating it’ll be the best long-haul flight I ever take.
What a truly incredible experience to be at Levi’s Stadium to witness this moment. Everything about the day was perfect. The weather was sufficiently excellent to the level you rue the day you weren’t born here. The stadium was packed with Seahawks fans.
I didn’t know what to expect from attending a Super Bowl. I’ve always felt it’s difficult to grasp what it’d be like on a TV broadcast. Would it be very corporate? A bit much?
Quite the opposite. It felt like any other sporting event frankly. Just that you were never more than 50 yards away from someone very famous. Green Day played a few songs eight rows in front of us before kick-off, with Tom Brady and Peyton Manning walking past like you were passing them in the mall.
Outside the stadium you’d casually just see former Seahawks, like Zach Miller and Ricardo Lockette, among the crowds desperately trying to find an Uber home.
Inside the stadium it felt loud when the Seahawks were on defense, with the Patriots fans a lot quieter when it was their turn. In fairness, I’d say it was more of a 60-40 split having thought it might 80-20 walking around San Jose on Saturday. But this was a moment for Seahawks fans. It was their day.
I’ve spoken about what 11 years ago did to me a few times in a way I’m not overly comfortable with. It feels a bit embarrassing to say a football game had an almost grieving effect on you — but it did. And it lasted a long time. The desperation not to see what was such an epic journey for a dynastic quality team end in abject misery was overbearing.
It took a long time to come to terms with the fact that would be the footnote of the LOB era. It’s a shame they were never able to channel that interception into a moment to come together and find inner-strength, rather than implode in anger. But I’ve never been in a locker-room or gone through that experience, so what do I know? Very little.
Even so, the emotions of that moment were unbearable at times.
It doesn’t seem real that 11 years on, this opportunity was presented. A chance to play the Patriots again in another Super Bowl. They opted to wear road whites as the home team, meaning the Seahawks would look the same as they did that day in Arizona. Chris Collinsworth was again in the booth for a NBC broadcast.
It’s as if the footballing gods were putting things right.
I posted a tweet after the game as the confetti fell simply saying ‘closure’. That’s how it feels to me. Not everyone will feel that way but I suspect many of you will. Any time I see that Malcolm Butler interception from now on I won’t shudder or immediately want to shut the TV off. I’ll think of this Super Bowl. I’ll think about how that experience became a feature of what made Sunday so amazing.
The Patriots used Butler to try and fire their fans up pre-game. I turned to Jeff Simmons and said I’m glad he’s here. I want him to be here for this too.
The Seahawks put things right. Minds will be calmer for this experience. We have another Championship to celebrate and there wasn’t a more perfect way to draw a line on the past.
The game itself was a one-sided domination. I could tell looking on X/Twitter that there was a little bit of handwringing about play-calling and missed opportunities. To me it was just a classic game of 2025 Seahawks football.
We live in an era, inspired mostly by social media and the talking head on TV (the cool kids) who want you to believe that there’s a way to play the game that is perfectly matched to all 32 teams, regardless of the game situation or opponent. Just do the 10 or so things the true ‘ball-knowers’ have decided matter and everything will be great. If you lose, well at least you lost looking really smart.
This isn’t football.
This sport is multi-faceted. There are many ways to win and it goes beyond an allergic reaction to ‘taking the points’ or ‘never run on 2nd and 10’ or ‘be aggressive on fourth down’.
Situational football matters. For me the most profound lesson from this season is Mike Macdonald repeatedly saying they let games declare and then act accordingly. It’s a level of measured common sense that a lot of teams simply did not possess this season, particularly in the playoffs.
When the Seahawks played the Vikings in the regular season, Greg Olsen — who was commentating for Fox — complained about the Seahawks settling for field goals. He stated ‘field goals get you beat’ — adding:
“I hate when commentators say it, I hate when coaches say it, I hate when the media says it. I don’t know what ‘take the points means,’ it doesn’t make sense to me.”
Olsen is frequently hailed as a broadcasting savant by a cheering online horde. He is, as some say, ‘team never kick’. He is not a fan of the field goal, an opinion shared by an increasing number of try-hards.
Yet here were the Seahawks, gleefully taking the points and the piss out of Olsen et al’s position on kicking. Jason Myers set a record for the most field goals in a Super Bowl (five). They understood what this game was — one where the defense was dominating and keeping the score ticking along was just fine.
Yes, it would’ve been wonderful to be more clinical in key moments and not let opportunities for touchdowns slip away. This isn’t Madden though where you just press the button and the ball goes to the open receiver for a completion. Not everything will go perfectly.
If the Patriots were more potent and productive on offense, I have no doubt the Seahawks would’ve treated the game differently. That wasn’t the case though, so field goals were fine. Frankly, at 12-0, it felt like the game was in complete control.
Cool-headed thinking, great situational awareness, a running game and superior play in the trenches. That’s why the Seahawks handled their business. You can win football games this way. It might not be trendy but it’ll typically be successful.
One other great success for Mike Macdondald is the way he’s created a team that is so together. I can’t recall another with this level of connection. I don’t have an intimate knowledge of every prior Super Bowl Champion, or near miss, but seeing the way these players interact across the entire 70-man roster feels unique.
I watched Top Gun Maverick for the 107th time on the plane to California. The scenes of celebration at the end felt very similar here, as established veterans took in a moment they perhaps thought wouldn’t come. The likes of Leonard Williams and DeMarcus Lawrence, getting their moment. Cooper Kupp was just taking it all in — imagine how he must feel today, getting a second Super Bowl ring but this time with his local team.
Then there’s the GM. Seahawks fans are so unbelievably blessed to have John Schneider at the controls. He has built two Championship rosters now. He hasn’t done it, either, by stumbling into a generational quarterback who just takes the league by storm. He’s done it the hard way — by building complete rosters.
Undoubtedly his place in the Hall of Fame should be secure in the future. It’s a fun exercise to think back to the battering he got in March for the inspired moves that transformed this team into a title-winner. Quite a few people ended up bearing their arse a few months ago and I’m not sure they’ve done enough to hold their hands up to that fact.
By the way, a penny for the thoughts today of Geno “Vegas is perfect for me, I really didn’t fit the culture in Seattle” Smith and DK “grass is greener on the other side” Metcalf.
Jody Allen looked positively overjoyed holding aloft the Lombardi trophy, with the huge Seahawks crowd still in the stadium roaring their approval.
Allen and Bert Kolde made one of the biggest decisions in Seahawks history two years ago and have been proven emphatically justified in doing so. It was time for a new era for this franchise. Backing Schneider and hiring Macdonald was a perfect example of inspired leadership when it was so critically needed.
So what now? Well, this is a draft blog first and foremost. Let’s start discussing ways that they can do it all again next year.
For now though, enjoy every moment. Celebrate in any way you can. The Seahawks are Super Bowl Champions again. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to write those words but here we are. They’ve done it.
Here’s a video I made of the sights and sounds of Super Bowl LX:
