The Seahawks Ripped Apart the Patriots’ Weaknesses With Ease

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — From the opening kickoff, each team displayed its biggest fears and vulnerabilities; the parts of themselves they loved and the parts of themselves they couldn’t wish away.

The Patriots blitzed like madmen, hurling themselves toward Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold in batches like rum-corked marauders. Not to establish some identity or set some kind of tone, but knowing that without forcing Darnold into a catastrophic mistake, there was no chance they could level a drastically lopsided playing field. This is what they couldn’t say during the week. Underneath the house-money cool, underneath all the individuality, underneath all of the love, the Patriots stumbled into this place far too early. They arrived without reinforcements.

Seattle blitzed, too. Far more often than tendencies illustrated earlier in the season, showing the non-football-viewing world what the rest had long understood: This Patriots offensive line had been immensely fortunate until now. Bailed out by opposing quarterback meltdowns or bomb cyclones whipping winter snow through the facemasks of their opponents during the playoffs, they were not yet filleted on a grand stage. Of course, they had not yet faced the Seahawks.

And, so came Devon Witherspoon and Nick Emmanwori. So came Rylie Mills, grabbing hold of Patriots guard Jared Wilson and steering him into the thighpads of second-year quarterback Drake Maye. Maye, with no direction available on his internal compass to bail, went down with all three in a heap of humanity. It’s not like the Patriots didn’t come close themselves, but each time the defense got near Darnold, he managed to snap off a throw. He managed to avoid calamity long enough to put his opponent down.

Seattle 29. New England 13. The Seahawks are the champions of Super Bowl LX. Maybe your idea of entertainment is not watching a team get its trachea slowly compressed via guillotine choke. Maybe field goals aren’t your thing, though each team eventually got to the end zone. But the NFL belongs to defenses now. The Seahawks plowed through this season proving that it’s possible to dissect an offense the way Sean McVay or Kyle Shanahan take apart opposing defenses. And now, a fantasy-starved league is left to consider how it can burn down the rule book to buoy its precious points once again.

Long before the start of this week, the Seahawks’ defensive staff had screenshotted every snap of this Patriots offensive line. Its tendencies to jump-set. Its tendencies to drop back vertically or at an angle. Its footwork. New England planned to counter by adjusting the timing by which Drake Maye set his hands under center. Maybe—just maybe—by throwing the line off its keys it would be harder to rush. Harder to plug up OC Josh McDaniels’s game plan like a washrag in the drain pipe.

The Patriots had 48 net gained yards at halftime, and 13 net passing yards on 25 plays. Then came the third quarter, when the full effect of Seattle’s brick-by-brick assassination—à la Montresor and Fortunato—was laid bare. By the time the Patriots had a lane to throw, Maye would subconsciously drift toward the teeth of Seattle’s interior rush. If he managed to find the sliver of open space the Seahawks’ secondary provided, the ball would ricochet off the fingertips of his wide receivers.

Pick your advanced metric of choice. Regardless of which one you use, this was among the worst offensive performances in Super Bowl history, and nearly the championship game’s only shutout. Though with an important caveat. Freeze the tape on most of Maye’s drop-backs and there was nowhere to go. Little glimmers of possibility lost in a hall of mirrors. In every game, the Seahawks offer opponents a macabre choice: Lose by bringing in so many backfield protectors to stop the rush that there are no receivers left to run routes, or lose with all your receivers running routes leaving no one to protect the quarterback.

The Patriots vacillated between both strategies, though by the time Maye had the ball punched out of his abdomen by Derick Hall at the end of the third quarter, it was more a matter of optics. Mack Hollins had a pair of catches that added points to the scoreboard, though New England’s sideline remained relatively still. Mike Vrabel swooped from position group to position group, hands on shoulders or scooped around helmets. It felt less like the conjuring of some miraculous turnaround and more like emotional triage. The Patriots added six more points late, with the game well out of reach.

Bricked inside the wall, the Patriots had to accept the confines of their enclosure on all sides. This was a good team learning one of life’s strange lessons: Nothing, not love, not opportunity, not luck, not joy—arrives when you’re ready. Sometimes, on the other side, you’re greeted by the tender beating heart of it all. Sometimes, you see the embodiment of just how far you have to go.

Seattle allowed no room for grace. No room for error. No room to believe anything other than the truth, as “Sweet Caroline” blared over the stadium loudspeaker and the Seahawks’ defense prepared to blitz yet again, pummeling Maye, jarring the football loose and returning it for a touchdown. Soon, a line of caution tape beneath the stadium would be constructed and lifted, sweeping friends and family of the future world champions onto the field with more than a minute to play.

Sometimes, against a team this suffocating, there is no plan, just a hope for survival.

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