Five plays into the first game of the season, it looked like Seattle's hopes of repeating were over before they could really get a chance to begin. QB Sam Darnold was sacked and limped off the field and into the injury tent, missing the rest of the game. With Drew Lock in against the defending AFC champions, the odds looked grim.
I'm pretty sure I saw people asking what Russell Wilson was up to during the game. Yet, the Seahawks emerged from the game 1-0, coming back to win 13-10 using the same defense that won them the Super Bowl. I talk about margins for error a lot, and how great teams give themselves a wide margin for error.
The Seahawks' defense gives them one of the widest margins of error in the sport, and can help them survive life without Darnold. I think the most fascinating part of this win is how different this game felt from the Super Bowl, yet also eerily similar for the Patriots' offense. We all remember how often Maye ended up on his back in the Super Bowl, to the tune of 23 pressures and 6 sacks, finishing with a blistering 43.4% pressure rate despite not blitzing much (per TruMedia).
On Wednesday, the Seahawks had only 6 pressures and 3 sacks, finishing with a paltry 14.3% pressure rate. A large part of that was Maye beating the blitz with his arm and finding scrambling lanes, something that he wasn't able to do in the Super Bowl. Yet, through the first three and a half quarters of the season opener, Maye was starting to find answers.
Some of the blitzes that worked turned into plays like this, finding WR AJ Brown to move the chains. Part of why I thought Drake Maye played a very good 3 1/2 quarters is because he was finding answers to the pressure in rhythm. SEA does a really good job of trying to disguise this blitz, but as soon as Maye sees Witherspoon blitz he throws the slant to AJB pic.twitter.com/8ElM1xcdwv But as the game got tighter, so did Seattle's defense.
The run defense was already phenomenal, but across the entire game, Seattle completely owned the line of scrimmage. On all running back runs on Wednesday (so it excludes Drake Maye scrambles), the Patriots had a 33.3% Success Rate, -0.14 Yards Before Contact and only 2.0 Yards After Contact against the Seahawks defense, all of which would've been dead last in 2025. It's part of what makes the Seahawks' defense so special: they force you to play at their pace, and no lead is safe because they can decide when an offense just stops moving the ball.
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