The Seattle Seahawks are the franchise the 12s built — the loudest fanbase in football, the team that turned a rainy Northwest outpost into one of the league's great home-field fortresses. Founded in 1976, the Seahawks spent decades as lovable wanderers: the Steve Largent grace years, Chuck Knox's ground-and-pound eighties, the Kingdome years when the noise was the only constant. The AFC West battles were fun, but the franchise didn't truly arrive until it moved to the NFC West and hired Mike Holmgren in 1999. Holmgren's Seahawks won five straight division titles and reached Super Bowl XL — lost to Pittsburgh on a night Seattle fans still dispute — and the city got its first taste of the big stage.
Then came Pete Carroll in 2010, and everything changed. Carroll built the Legion of Boom — Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor — around a third-round quarterback named Russell Wilson, and the 2013 Seahawks produced one of the most dominant seasons ever played: a 43-8 demolition of the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII, the franchise's first championship. A year later they were one yard away from repeating, until Malcolm Butler's goal-line interception in Super Bowl XLIX became the most second-guessed play call in history. The Wilson era eventually fractured, the rebuild began, and in 2024 the franchise handed the keys to Mike Macdonald, the young defensive mastermind from Baltimore's coaching tree.
Macdonald's second season delivered the ultimate validation. The 2025 Seahawks won a franchise-record 14 regular-season games behind quarterback Sam Darnold — the former Jets bust turned Minnesota revelation, signed to a $100.5 million contract in the boldest gamble of the offseason — and rolled all the way to a Super Bowl championship. Darnold threw for 4,048 yards with 25 touchdowns, the defense finished first in Defensive DVOA, and a Week 18 win over San Francisco snapped the 49ers' six-game winning streak and announced the changing of the guard in the NFC West. Darnold joined Tom Brady as the only quarterbacks ever to win 14-plus games in back-to-back seasons with different teams.
The 2026 title defense has been equal parts euphoric and terrifying. Opening night against New England: a 13-10 win, but Darnold went down on the fifth play of the season, sacked by Dre'Mont Jones — an injury so frightening the team initially feared a fractured hip socket, and Darnold himself feared his season, even his career, might be over. Enter Drew Lock, who played like a man possessed: 72.9 percent completions, 422 yards, four touchdowns, zero interceptions across two games, all four scores going to superstar receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba. A 31-7 rout at Arizona. Macdonald called Darnold's rapid recovery a "medical miracle," and the starter returned in Week 3 against Washington.
What happened next was the upset of the young season. Darnold threw for a career-high 379 yards and four touchdowns — and two interceptions, the second a pick-six over the middle he himself called "a bad decision" — as the Commanders stunned the champs 33-31 in Landover. The loss ended Seattle's franchise-record 13-game winning streak, the NFL's longest since Kansas City won 15 straight across 2023 and 2024, and it was the Seahawks' largest upset loss by point spread since 2020. Rookie running back Jadarian Price lost his second fumble in as many weeks, and with Zach Charbonnet on injured reserve, the run game has been a genuine concern.
Perspective matters, though. At 2-1, the Seahawks still own one of the league's truly elite defenses — second in points allowed, a unit that through two weeks was one of just five since 2010 to allow fewer than 20 points and fewer than 4.0 yards per play to open a season. Darnold is healthy. Smith-Njigba is uncoverable. The 12s are still the 12s. The target on the champion's back is real, and Washington just proved it — but this is a franchise that knows exactly who it is, and exactly how loud it gets when it matters.
The supporting cast is championship-grade on both sides. Kenneth Walker III remains the home-run threat in the backfield when the blocking holds up, and the hope is that Charbonnet's eventual return from injured reserve restores the thunder-and-lightning balance that powered last season's run. On defense, Devon Witherspoon has blossomed into a genuine star at cornerback, and Macdonald's scheme — the disguised pressures, the simulated coverages that made Baltimore's defense hum — has translated seamlessly. The front office bet that continuity plus Darnold's ascendance would keep the window wide open, and through three weeks the defense has validated every bit of it. The schedule offers no breathers: the NFC West gauntlet includes two dates with the surging 49ers, and the conference is deep enough that home-field advantage will have to be earned week by week. The 12s have seen this movie before — the 2013 team turned a dominant defense and a doubted quarterback into a parade. The 2026 team is trying to write the sequel.
Related on Previously: NFL Rewind · San Francisco 49ers · Arizona Cardinals · Los Angeles Rams · Washington Commanders
