Seahawks, Patriots Both Prove Quick Turnarounds Possible in Modern NFL

Avert your eyes, Jets fans. Browns fans, look away. Giants fans, this may be tough to look at.

If you ask those fanbases, building a true contender takes a very long time. Decades, maybe. They’ve watched their favorite teams bounce around at the bottom of the league, year after year, waiting for the magical moment where things slide into place for their roster and staff. Surely, all that losing must eventually add up to a winner, in a league that enforces parity.

The Jets haven’t made the playoffs since 2010, the second of back-to-back AFC Championship Game appearances in the Rex Ryan era. The Browns have three playoff appearances and one playoff win since the turn of the century. The Giants have one playoff win since Super Bowl XLVI fifteen years ago. High draft picks and new coaches have warranted so little to celebrate.

But surely, such suffering is part of the process? You have to be bad for a long time to eventually be good again, right? If so, no one told the two teams participating in the upcoming Super Bowl. The Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots are both proving, in real time, that there’s a better path to success than years of futility.

In 2020, the Seattle Seahawks went 12-4 and won their division. Now, in 2025, they’re 14-3, the NFC’s top seed, and in the Super Bowl. The two teams have almost nothing in common. New coach, quarterback, backfield, receivers, offensive line, and defense. The only similarities are Jarran Reed, Jason Myers, Michael Dickson, and a couple practice squad members.

Well, both teams have the same general manager. John Schneider architected both squads, and he deserves a ton of credit for finding high levels of success with such different rosters and staffs. But the thing is, the Seahawks never had to bottom out to get back to the top. They had one losing season, a 7-10 record in 2021, and then posted three straight winning seasons.

The Seahawks never even once picked in the top ten of an NFL draft via their own selection, getting the #9 and #5 overall picks from the Denver Broncos in the Russell Wilson trade. Rebuilding their roster on the back of that trade, as well as hitting on other picks and signings, there was virtually no losing to serve as a prelude to this team’s winning.

It’d be one thing if the Seahawks had scraped the bottom of the league for a few seasons and picked up elite blue chippers like Aidan Hutchinson and Joe Alt, maybe even a franchise quarterback like Jayden Daniels or C.J. Stroud (I mean, maybe?). That would follow the traditional pattern of an NFL franchise.

Who had the Patriots in the Super Bowl again this fast? — New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel speaks to the media after defeating the Denver Broncos. | Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images

The Seahawks went through this process in the immediate aftermath of the Mike Holmgren era, going 4-12 and 5-11 in back-to-back seasons. That this iteration of the team was able to loop back to the Super Bowl without ever even coming close to that level of ineptitude is a tremendous credit, and proves John Schneider’s competency.

The Patriots are slightly more traditional in their path, in that they did take two straight 4-13 seasons to get here, and used the high pick earned from one of those terrible seasons to get their franchise quarterback in Drake Maye. But the thing that stands out here is just how quickly the team swung from bottom feeder to contender in a single offseason.

The 2024 Patriots were among the worst teams in the league. A bottom three offense and a bottom ten defense. Not much to speak of in the backfield or at receiver. Very limited pass rush. Practically allergic to turnovers. Not a team that you’d expect to be able to flip into a fourteen win conference champion in a single offseason.

They hired the right coach in Mike Vrabel, they spent a lot of money on the right players like Stefon Diggs and Robert Spillane, drafted the right rookies in TreVeyon Henderson and Jared Wilson. Drake Maye ascended. Add in an easy schedule and here we are, back in the Super Bowl.

And let’s not forget that a completely different New England Patriots team was in the playoffs back in 2021, or atop the AFC East in 2019, or hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in 2018. The turnaround on this franchise to get back to their winning ways would make almost any other team very envious.

Either way, both of these teams have done an excellent job proving that winning doesn’t come from losing. All the top draft picks and sexy coaching hires in the world can’t replace a winning culture and mentality.

Is John Harbaugh the reward for fifteen years of losing and failure? — New York Giants general manager Joe Schoen and head coach John Harbaugh pose. | Ed Mulholland-Imagn Images

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