Seahawks’ Dark Side all set for sequels after overpowering their familar foe

SCOTT STRAZZANTE/AP

Byron Murphy II (No 91) and Devon Witherspoon (No 21) helped 

Seattle complete one of the NFL’s all-time team renovation

Seattle’s Dark Side reduced yet another politically charged edition of the spectacle to a blowout

10 Feb 2026 - The Guardian

Andrew Lawrence

Super Bowl LX was a two-score game with less than five minutes remaining. New England had the ball on the Seahawks’ 44-yard line and – after reaching the end zone in the fourth quarter, finally – that familiar sense of possibility. But that quickly vaporised when Devon Witherspoon knifed in on a blitz and jarred the ball loose from the Patriots quarterback, Drake Maye, mid-throw. Uchenna Nwosu snatched it in stride and rumbled 45 yards to the end zone, sealing Seattle’s 29-13 victory.

That the league’s top defence was able to punctuate this moment, more than a decade in the making, with an interception as the Super Bowl XLIX hero Malcolm Butler looked on made the Seahawks’ revenge all the sweeter. “They lived up to the Dark Side today,” the Seattle head coach, Mike Macdonald, said of his defence. “It’s going to go down in the history books.”

It seems every great Seahawks defence earns a slick nickname to match its reputation. At their 2010s peak, the Legion of Boom was the NFL’s most feared gang. This year, the Dark Side took up that mantle. Both defences proved rough, relentless and ready to throw down at a moment’s notice.

By retracing the Legion of Boom’s arc and claiming the grand prize, the Dark Side is set for a few sequels, too. The Seahawks not only have youth and cap space on their side, but also continuity under their longtime general manager, John Schneider. His speed and skill in assembling a championship-calibre defence in Macdonald’s second year, after gutting the roster, stands as one of the NFL’s all-time renovations.

The teardown began in 2022, when Schneider shipped the quarterback Russell Wilson, linchpin of the franchise’s Super Bowl win 12 years ago, to Denver in exchange for the linebackers Boye Mafe and Derick Hall, a 2023 draft pick that became Witherspoon and then followed it with a late-season trade for the tackle Leonard Williams.

In 2024, Schneider made an even tougher call, replacing Pete Carroll, his collaborator in 137 regular-season wins and two Super Bowl appearances, with Macdonald (then the Ravens’ defensive coordinator) in a move that bucked the trend of hiring offensive assistants.

Schneider did not stop there, trading for the linebacker Ernest Jones IV that same year while spending the team’s first-round draft choice on the standout University of Texas nose tackle, Byron Murphy II. For a coup de grâce, in 2025, Schneider added the Pro Bowl pass rusher DeMarcus Lawrence to supercharge Macdonald’s swarming defensive schemes.

“Even before I got here, Mike was doing special things with this team, special things with this defence,” Lawrence said in the run-up to the game. “I was able to see it from afar. Now just being here and seeing the creative mind he has, the way he sets us all up to make plays and go hunt the quarterback, it’s truly amazing.”

Every move paid off on Sunday as the Dark Side hammered Maye 11 times – including a brutal second-quarter sack by the rookie defensive tackle Rylie Mills. The Seahawks limited the league’s second-best scoring offence to its second-lowest total of the season, while Maye, a regular-season MVP frontrunner, turned the ball over three times and posted his third-worst QB rating of the year. The defensive effort – backed by a special teams masterclass, an MVP performance from the running back Kenneth Walker III and steady if unspectacular quarterback play from Sam Darnold – was easily the most lopsided defensive Super Bowl showcase since the Legion of Boom throttled Peyton Manning and the Broncos in 2014. It reduced yet another politically charged edition of the spectacle, this one powered by Bad Bunny’s layered half-time set, to a bog standard blowout.

For all the Dark Side’s obvious comparisons to their forebears, they have been notably reluctant to trade on that pedigree. Unlike the Legion of Boom, studded with homegrown blue-chip prospects, many on the current Seattle defence arrived with something to prove, having been overlooked and undervalued before Schneider and Macdonald handed them to Aden Durde – himself a league long-shot from England.

Julian Love, who spent years buried on the New York Giants’ depth chart before Seattle snapped him up in 2023, quickly emerged as a 100-plus tackle force under Macdonald and Durde. Lawrence, long among the league’s premier pass rushers, saw his star dim in Dallas.

But their Star Wars reference does not evoke the same feelings New England’s nickname did. The Patriots of the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick era were likened to an Evil Empire on par with that of the New York Yankees. But under Maye and the head coach, Mike Vrabel, they have become strangely Jedi-like: principled, disciplined, and almost likable in a way that defies the old narrative.

Seattle’s Dark Side, by contrast, appears to be stacked with genuine Sith Lords who lead with emotion as they pound opponents into submission. But because they have overcome so much, not least the shadow of those old Boston bullies, you can’t help but admire these new gridiron oppressors.