Reactions and overreactions from the 2025 NFL season

The Seattle Seahawks are Super Bowl champions. They were smart, aggressive, lucky and patient.

The 2025 NFL season is now officially in the books and for the second time in franchise history the Seattle Seahawks are Super Bowl champions. They might have been long-shots when the season began, but they quickly established themselves as contenders, became more dominant as the season went on, and more than proved themselves as the best and most complete team in the league. They are impressive, from the front office, to the coaching staff, right on down to the roster. They did pretty much everything right.

I also find their rise to the top of the NFL fascinating, especially in relation to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

1. A few quick points on how Seattle got here.

• Prior to this season the Steelers and Seahawks were virtually same franchises in terms of actual on-field success. Seattle has had just one losing season in 14 years, and even that was only 7-10, and it was five years ago. Despite the consistent competitiveness, the Seahawks had won just one playoff games in the previous eight years. They never tore it down to the studs. They never tanked. They were always “in it.” They just never really did anything with it. They were in that same mushy-middle range where they were never truly bad, but also never really great. They drafted exceptionally well, they made what turned out to be a brilliant trade by sending away Russell Wilson, hired a great new coaching staff, found a competent quarterback and also got some big-time luck.

• The luck being that the Denver Broncos absolutely shit the bed with Russell Wilson, turning all of those draft picks they received into high first-and second-round picks. If Denver does not go in the crapper with Wilson, Seattle does not come away with a couple of top-10 picks or high second-round picks. That means no Devon Witherspoon. Potentially no Derick Hall or Boye Mafe. It means a completely different defense than the one that dominated the NFL and the Super Bowl this year. Luck is a big part of winning a championship. Luck also comes in a lot of different forms. This is one of them, even if it was also complemented by great roster management and scouting.

• This is the second year in a row we have seen a team with a very good, but not-quite-elite quarterback win a Super Bowl on the strength of a balanced roster and dominant defense. I have been making this point for a while now, but defense will never go out of style. Defense will always be a way to be competitive and win. The past three Super Bowl champions finished the regular season second, second and first in team defense.

• This is also another year that continues the trend of teams not winning the Super Bowl with a top-five quarterback that they drafted. While Sam Darnold was a No. 3 overall pick in his draft year, he was not picked by Seattle. He was picked by the New York Jets nearly a decade ago and four teams ago. His draft position in relation to Seattle’s roster no longer matters. It is irrelevant, because they did not need to position themselves in that spot to get him. They just signed him when he was available. The past five franchises that have won the Super Bowl, accounting for the past seven total championships, got their starting quarterbacks via trade, free agency, free agency, the No. 10 overall pick (after trading up in the draft following a 12-4 finish and winning a playoff game) and the second-round (after a 9-7 season).

• The last quarterback to be picked in the top-five and win a Super Bowl with the team that picked him was Peyton Manning … who was drafted in 1998! If you want to quibble with that and also include Eli Manning given the circumstances around his trade to the New York Giants, he was drafted in 2004. Either way, it is over two decades. I previously took a deeper dive on this, but Darnold adds another Super Bowl winning quarterback to the list of Super Bowl winning quarterbacks that were added in a different way. If you are still beating the drum that you have to be bad to get a Super Bowl winning quarterback you are quite literally beating the wrong drum.

2. The main takeaway from this should not be that it is easy to model what Seattle did or the way Seattle did it. Or that you even have to do it that way.

The takeaway should be that there is no one way to win and no one way to build a team.

Anybody that tells things have to be done a certain way and with a certain approach is selling an agenda or their own pre-determined narrative they refuse to deviate from.

You can win with offense. You can win with passing. You can with running.

You can win the defense.

You can win with a full-scale rebuild.

You can win by avoiding that, remaining competitive and finding the missing pieces you need along the way.

All of it can work.

The thing that matters is you have to actually be GOOD at whatever path you choose.

Until this season nobody was really arguing the Seahawks were good at it. But they found the missing pieces they needed and suddenly everything fell into place.

The Steelers have not been as good at it.

Now let’s talk about the team the Seahawks beat, what could be ahead for them, and several other NFL topics, including the team that might be best positioned for a big offseason and huge 2026 season.