In the wash of the celebration after his second Super Bowl title as the Seahawks’ general manager, John Schneider was asked about comparisons with 12 years ago.
Of course he was, and why wouldn’t he be? He helped put together the team that over a four-year build grew to become the best in football with one of the more dominant defensive performances in Super Bowl history when the Seahawks won their first title.
And a dozen years later, Schneider helped put together the team that in a two-year build grew to be the best in football with one of the more dominant defensive performances in Super Bowl history that capped the Seahawks’ second title.
“It’s different. It’s similar, but different,” Schneider said.
And that’s the way it should be. They are two uniquely constructed teams that have provided the city of Seattle with its two most prestigious professional sports titles.
But the realities of only experiencing two championships in 50 seasons is there is undoubtedly going to be comparisons between the title teams.
It’s not fair. Each should be acknowledged and appreciated for its own individuality and the factors that made each team special. The individual personalities, the individual plays, the individual moments that made up the two championship seasons.
But that’s not going to be the case, at least in the short term. Maybe if and when the time comes that the Seahawks add a third championship some of those head-to-head comparisons will cease.
For now, the comparisons make great fodder. The kind that Seahawks fans have craved for the 50 seasons of the franchise to have the ability to celebrate more than just one team as champions.
Which was better, the Legion of Boom or the Dark Side defense? Did Russell Wilson direct the Seahawks to the Super Bowl title better than what Sam Darnold did? Is Devon Witherspoon this generation’s version of Richard Sherman? What about the comparisons between Nick Emmanwori and Kam Chancellor? Cliff Avril and Uchenna Nwosu? Who do you take, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Cooper Kupp or Doug Baldwin and Golden Tate?
We’re not here to pick sides. Instead, here’s a look at some of the things that each of the title teams had in common:
Legion of the Dark Side
Defense wins championships. It’s a lovely saying repeated often across all sports. It’s relevant in football, basketball, hockey, soccer and in baseball takes on a morphed form with pitching included.
And in the case of the Seahawks, they are not owners of two Lombardis if not for having the best defense in the game in both of those seasons.
In the case of the 2013 defense, it was stopping the pass. They were the best pass defense in the NFL. The Legion of Boom group allowed the fewest points in the league, the fewest yards in the league, but it was largely based on a pass defense that shut down everything. Consider that the Seahawks defense that season had 28 – 28! – interceptions in the regular season alone. For as great as the 2025 Seahawks defense was, they forced only 25 total turnovers the entire regular season. While teams were able to generate some yards on the ground against the Legion of Boom era team, putting the ball in the air was a risky proposition.
With this year’s team, it started by stopping the run. The Seahawks were best in the league in yards per rush allowed at 3.7 and third in total yards rushing allowed, and everything else was predicated by that. Limiting what opponents were able to do on the ground provided the opportunities to throw out different coverages or bring different blitzes and confuse teams when they passed because they were often in passing situations. And it led to the one statistic where the Seahawks ranked at the bottom of the league this year defensively – pass attempts allowed. Only four teams saw opponents pass against them more during the regular season than the Seahawks. But it didn’t matter when they were throwing against one of the best secondaries in the NFL and often playing from behind.
Whether your flavor was more Boom than Dark Side, they were both elite groups that were a cut above everyone else in one specific area.
More than game managers
Admit it. Before the start of the season, you wanted a heavy dose of running the ball behind an improved offensive line. And while the quarterback had flashed some optimism, the fewer times he was called upon to win the game, the better.
Are we talking about the feeling going into the 2013 season or 2025?
A dozen years ago, Russell Wilson still needed to prove what he showed in his rookie season – especially the latter half – was not a fluke and that the Seahawks had truly discovered a steal in the draft.
In 2025, Sam Darnold needed to prove that his comeback story from the previous season with Minnesota was real and that the franchise made the right decision in moving on from Geno Smith in handing the offense to the former No. 3 overall pick.
There are always going to be questions about the players at the most important position on the field when their pedigree or their previous experiences don’t fall in line with convention. Wilson was always going to be too short to be successful. Darnold was always going to be the bust from the first chapter of his pro career in New York.
For both quarterbacks, there was a lot of help around them. Marshawn Lynch rushed for nearly 1,300 yards and 12 touchdowns behind Wilson. Smith-Njigba was the NFL Offensive Player of the Year catching all those passes from Darnold.
But Wilson and Darnold were still largely responsible for what those teams accomplished and silenced some of those questions along the way to their titles.
Needed parts
Every team has the unsung players that don’t get a ton of attention yet were vital in reaching the end goal.
For the 2013 team, it was guys like Max Unger, Jermaine Kearse, Zach Miller, Red Bryant and Brandon Mebane. Even Cliff Avril, Michael Bennett, Doug Baldwin and K.J. Wright were a bit unheralded before that season started.
This season, it was the likes of Grey Zabel, AJ Barner, Abraham Lucas, Drake Thomas, Ty Okada, Josh Jobe and Zach Charbonnet who either stepped into roles or took on a higher profile that helped lift this group to a title.
There will always be stars on teams that win championships. There will also be others that likely deserve more recognition than they get.
Is the fire the same?
This is the piece that maybe we don’t know yet about the 2025 Seahawks.
Seattle’s first championship team was fueled by doubt. Don’t think we can win a title? We’ll show you. Don’t think we can get back to the Super Bowl? We’ll show you again. There’s a very real universe where if a different play is called in Super Bowl 49, the Seahawks become not only back-to-back champs, but the only team to three-peat. Obtaining that level of greatness was paramount to that group.
Will the chance of repeating be the fuel for this group of Seahawks? Nine times in league history, franchises have won back-to-back titles (the Steelers did it twice). This group is based on being a great football team that gets along and less about silencing doubters.
We’ll all get to find out the answer to that question starting Sept. 10, when the season is expected to begin, the night the Seahawks’ second championship banner is raised.