RENTON — The NFL’s schedule rotation long ago handed the Seahawks a gift.
In the 50th season for the Seahawks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the schedule formula that calls for the NFC West and NFC South to play each other every three years happened to land on 2025 for the Bucs to make the trip to Seattle.
What better way for the Seahawks to celebrate their 50th anniversary than with a game against their expansion counterpart?
The two teams will wear throwback uniforms reminiscent of their early years for a 1:05 p.m. kickoff at Lumen Field, and the Seahawks are using the occasion to hold a reunion of the top 50 players in team history.
The top 50 list was voted on and announced earlier in the year. The Seahawks are anticipating as many as 41 of the 50 to be in attendance and take part in a halftime ceremony.
Four — Russell Wilson (Giants), Bobby Wagner (Commanders), Tyler Lockett (Titans) and DK Metcalf (Steelers) — are with other teams.
A few others, such as KJ Wright (49ers), are coaching with other teams and won’t be able to attend.
Two, sadly, are deceased — cornerback Dave Brown and defensive tackle Cortez Kennedy.
Among those expected to attend is safety Earl Thomas, who has not made a public appearance at Lumen Field since his playing career ended in 2020 with the Baltimore Ravens.
About the same time as that ceremony is held in front of the usual 69,000 or so at Lumen, another 45,000 or so will begin showing up across the street to watch the Mariners in Game 2 of the American League Division Series, set to begin at 5:03 p.m.
“Excited for this week, Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said Wednesday. “Big weekend for Seattle sports, excited for that.”
Macdonald was almost 11 years away from being born the first time the Seahawks and Bucs played on Oct. 17, 1976, in Tampa, Fla.
The game that followed was fitting of two expansion teams that came into the game each 0-5 — Vegas had the contest listed as a pick ‘em.
There were a combined 15 punts and 310 penalty yards, the latter a Seahawks team record that still stands (a whopping 190 by Tampa Bay).
One of Tampa Bay’s 20 penalties came when Seahawks punter Rick Engles took off running on a fake in the second quarter facing a fourth-and-four at their own 46.
His 13-yard jaunt plus 15 yards gained via a facemask helped set up the Seahawks’ only TD, a 15-yard pass from Jim Zorn to Sam McCullum that put them ahead for good.
Engles admitted the fake wasn’t called, but that he just took off running after seeing the way the play was unfolding.
“I don’t know why I ran except that they were running away from the right side and it was open,” Engles said the next day in The Seattle Times.
It foreshadowed how coach Jack Patera’s early teams became known for never being afraid to take a chance — Engles had three rushes that season for 37 yards and a pass completion for 8.
“As long as he’s right he can do it every time,” Patera said.
The game wasn’t decided until Seahawks linebacker Mike Curtis — the first defensive captain in team history — blocked a 35-yard field-goal attempt by Tampa Bay’s Dave Green with 42 seconds left. That allowed the Seahawks to escape with a 13-10 win and avoid the two teams going into overtime.
Curtis, who was a 33-year-old, 12-year veteran better known to most NFL fans as the leader of the defense of the Baltimore Colts when they won Super Bowl V, said he had a simple motivation for blocking the kick.
“I was afraid of overtime,” Curtis said in the next day’s Seattle Times in a story headlined “No O.T. for Curtis.”
“I don’t think I could have made it to that. It was hot out there (the temperature at kickoff was listed at 80 degrees on the official play-by-play) and I was getting a little dizzy.”
Said Patera after the Seahawks won what many dubbed the Expansion Bowl: “There is no substitute for winning no matter how you do it.”
The Bucs infamously finished the season 0-14, while the Seahawks beat Atlanta a couple weeks later in finishing 2-12.
The Seahawks won a rematch the following year at the Kingdome, 30-23, and have won nine of the 15 games they have played.
The win in 1976 was the first of 405 wins for the Seahawks against 374 losses and one infamous tie.
That’s almost five 17-game seasons worth of wins more than Tampa Bay, which is 321-458-1.
The Seahawks also have one more Super Bowl appearance than the Bucs with three and have played in 36 playoff games to Tampa Bay’s 25.
Tampa Bay has one more Super Bowl victory, winning in 2002 and 2020, and far more relevant to Macdonald, has also made the playoffs more recently, losing a tight game to Washington last year in the wild-card round, 23-20.
Tampa Bay is in the midst of a franchise-record run of playoff appearances with five, beginning with the Tom Brady-led run to the Super Bowl in 2020.
The Seahawks have made the playoffs only once since 2020, a wild-card loss to the 49ers in 2022.
As each team celebrates the past on Sunday, each has a potentially promising present.
Both teams are 3-1 — Tampa Bay winning three in a row before a home loss Sunday to the defending champion Eagles, while the Seahawks have won three in a row following a season-opening home loss to the 49ers.
Tampa Bay has some significant injury concerns, including likely playing without star receiver Mike Evans — who sat out the Eagles game with a hamstring issue — and with quarterback Baker Mayfield (knee, right biceps) and leading rusher Bucky Irving (foot, shoulder) among nine players who did not take part in Wednesday’s walk-through, which the team held in lieu of a full practice.
“We probably had more people that couldn’t practice than could practice today,” Bucs coach Todd Bowles told reporters.
The Seahawks had the weekend to rest after beating Arizona 23-20 on Thursday on a last-play field goal, a win that moved them into a three-way tie for first in the NFC West with the Rams and 49ers.
“We’re in a cool spot because we’ve figured out a way to win games, and we also feel like we have a lot of room for growth and the guys feel the same way, Macdonald said earlier this week. “There’s an urgency there to go keep attacking, keep figuring out ways to get better, improve on the things and the mentality that we have throughout games, and it’s exciting. It’s exciting to have room for growth and also have some wins in the win column.”
They hope to get another one Sunday while remembering a time when they had zero.