Seahawks Bank on Continuity to Avoid the Fate of Past Champions

The Seattle Seahawks got their Super Bowl rings on June 11, and coach Mike Macdonald was already talking about next season before the party ended. Four months earlier, Seattle had beaten the New England Patriots 29-13 in Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium, the franchise’s second Lombardi Trophy.

Now the celebrating is officially over. Mandatory minicamp wrapped the same day as the ring ceremony, and the roster that won it all is heading into training camp still mostly intact, even as the Los Angeles Rams spent the offseason building a roster designed to take the crown away.

Rings, a Boeing Hangar, and a Deadline to Move On

The ring ceremony ran long. Players and coaches gathered in a Boeing hangar for what was supposed to be a scheduled dinner and presentation, and by 9 p.m. it had turned into something looser, guys scattered between two party areas, drinks in hand, in no hurry to leave each other’s company.

Macdonald summed it up for his team that night. “Congratulations, we are world champions for now and forever,” he said.

The ring itself, created by a ring engineered with a hidden arch mechanism built by luxury jeweler Jason of Beverly Hills, is being called the largest Super Bowl ring ever made. Seahawks president Chuck Arnold said the piece would “forever represent our historic 50th season and the dedication and determination of our entire franchise.”

Strip away the marketing language and the ring is packed with real detail:

• A hidden button on a 12 flag that releases twin white-gold arches shaped like Lumen Field’s rooftop, popping open to reveal the words “WORLD CHAMPIONS.”
• Fifty round white diamonds circling the center logo, marking the franchise’s 50th season.
• The number “17 WINS” engraved inside, the club’s combined regular season and playoff win total.
• A top that detaches completely from the base and converts into a pendant.
• Twelve feathers on the bottom honoring the team’s fan base, along with the mantra M.O.B., team shorthand for keeping the mission over the noise.

Jason of Beverly Hills has now made rings for three of the last five Super Bowl champions. Tiffany and Co. made Seattle’s rings the last time it won it all, after the 2013 season.

Run It Forward Replaces Run It Back

Every defending champion faces the same cliche about running it back. Macdonald has spent the offseason actively rejecting the phrase.

“Run it forward” is the language he and his staff settled on instead, a small wording choice meant to stop players from treating last season as a finished chapter they can coast on. Twenty of the 22 starters from the Super Bowl are returning, and Macdonald has made clear he does not want that continuity mistaken for entitlement.

Players have absorbed the message. Right tackle Abe Lucas described it as a mental checkpoint. “In my mind, I’ve kind of moved forward a little bit,” Lucas said. “But there’s, like, an official cap off to last year, then like Mike said, run it forward to the next year.” He called it “the epitome of a championship team mindset,” adding there is “no time to really dilly dally on it.”

Rookie guard Grey Zabel, the 18th overall pick in 2025 who started at left guard on the Super Bowl team, put it more bluntly. “I do got some other buddies in the NFL that are pretty, pretty mad that Year 1, made it happen,” Zabel said. He expects to wear the ring once, then move on. “It’s one of those deals that’ll probably wear it tonight, then throw it in the safe and move on to next year and go try and get that second one,” he said, adding the team has “a lot of new pieces” to figure out.

Macdonald has gone as far as calling around the league for advice. “I have reached out to some people who have won back-to-back championships,” he said, though he added the Seahawks intend to do things their own way rather than copy anyone else’s formula.

None of it is happening in a vacuum. Behind closed doors at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center, his run it forward messaging landing with players through OTAs and minicamp is exactly the kind of institutional discipline that history says repeat champions usually lack.

Twenty of Twenty-Two Starters Are Back

Seattle’s offseason strategy has been retention over reinvention. The team re-signed Rashid Shaheed to a multi-year deal after the receiver scored on both a kickoff and a punt return last season, and matched Jacksonville’s offer sheet to keep restricted free agent Jake Bobo rather than let a fan favorite walk.

Still, five real holes opened up.

Fleury inherits an offense he did not have to rebuild from scratch. Both he and Kubiak came up through the Kyle Shanahan coaching tree, and Macdonald described the transition as more evolution than overhaul. “It’s this year’s version of last year’s offense,” Macdonald said. “It’s the Seahawks offense, and Brian has brought some great ideas and some things we can move and shift.”

Seattle still has the NFL’s sixth-most salary cap space for next season at 72.3 million dollars, with more available through restructures, evidence the modest offseason reflects a choice to stay the course rather than a lack of financial room.

Ernest Jones Has Already Lived This Storyline

Linebacker Ernest Jones IV is the one person in the Seahawks’ building who has seen exactly how this can go wrong. He was a member of the Los Angeles Rams team that won the Super Bowl after the 2021 season, then collapsed to a 5-12 record the following year as injuries piled up.

The first time, we were trying to defend it. This time, last year really doesn’t matter. Last year is not going to help us.

Jones said that, drawing a direct line between his old team’s fate and what he wants to avoid with his new one. He has framed the difference as a matter of mindset rather than talent, telling reporters the Seahawks need to reestablish themselves from the season’s first snap rather than lean on what they already accomplished.

History is not kind to teams in Seattle’s position. Repeating as Super Bowl champion is rare enough that Macdonald himself has noted the Seahawks are trying to become just the ninth franchise and tenth team ever to do it. The 2022 Rams are only one entry on a long list of championship rosters that came apart within a year.

The Rams Spent What Seattle Wouldn’t

If continuity is Seattle’s answer, aggression is the Rams’ answer, and it happens to be aimed at the same division title.

Los Angeles sent Jared Verse and three future draft picks, a 2027 first-rounder, a 2028 second-rounder and a 2029 third-rounder, to Cleveland in exchange for reigning Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett, who is coming off a 23-sack season that broke the NFL’s single-season record. The Rams also added a three-year, 51 million dollar cornerback who won a Super Bowl in Kansas City alongside Trent McDuffie, giving Los Angeles a pair of former Chiefs defensive backs to anchor a secondary that already ranked among the league’s best on paper last season.

Pro Football Network analyst Jacob Infante called the Rams the single biggest threat to a Seahawks repeat, pointing to a roster that already graded as elite on both sides of the ball before the Garrett trade even happened. The two teams are scheduled to play twice in the final three weeks of the 2026 season, in Weeks 16 and 18, a stretch that could decide the NFC West outright.

Why Isn’t Anyone Talking About the Seahawks?

Despite winning it all, Seattle has drawn noticeably less national attention this offseason than the Rams, largely because the Seahawks made no blockbuster trades or signings while Los Angeles dominated headlines with the Garrett deal and its secondary additions.

ESPN’s Kevin Clark said the gap in coverage has gone far enough that Seattle’s underdog framing, usually an eye-roll from a defending champion, has become genuine. “The Seahawks are on the shortlist for most disrespected Super Bowl champions of my lifetime,” Clark said, comparing them to the twice-snubbed Eli Manning-era Giants.

Seahawks Radio Network analyst Michael Bumpus agreed, tying the snub partly to geography. “I think that’s kind of part of being associated with the Northwest,” Bumpus said. “You just lost up in the mix.” He added that respect for the Rams and respect for the Seahawks are not mutually exclusive, even if he admitted the imbalance “is getting ridiculous.”

The numbers back up the case that Seattle is being underrated rather than correctly discounted.

• Plus-246 point differential across the regular season and playoffs, the best mark by a champion since the 1999 St. Louis Rams.
• 14 of their final 15 games won on the way to the title, capped by a defense that allowed just one touchdown in the Super Bowl.
• Fourth-youngest roster in the NFL last season by snap-weighted age, according to FTN Fantasy, a football analytics outlet.
• Plus-1100 odds to repeat, fourth on the board behind the Rams at plus-550, per DraftKings Sportsbook.

Leonard Williams, the veteran defensive lineman, has shrugged off the disrespect narrative rather than fight it, signaling the locker room is fine using it as fuel rather than a grievance.

September 9 Circles Back to New England

Training camp opens for real at the end of July, and Seattle will spend part of it under a bigger spotlight than usual. HBO’s Hard Knocks will follow the team through camp, including a joint practice with the Tennessee Titans in Nashville on August 21, two days before the two teams meet in the second week of the preseason.

The preseason itself opens August 15 at Lumen Field against the Dallas Cowboys, Seattle’s only home exhibition game, before road trips to Tennessee and then Kansas City to close out the exhibition slate. Fans anxious about actually finding these games on their television have their own subplot to track, too, in the ongoing carriage fight over NFL Network access that has rattled cord-cutting subscribers this offseason.

None of it matches the symmetry of the regular season opener. On Wednesday, September 9, the Seahawks open their title defense against the New England Patriots, the same team they beat by 16 points to win it all in February.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Rare Is It for a Team to Repeat as Super Bowl Champion?

It is rare enough that Macdonald has pointed out the Seahawks would become only the ninth franchise and tenth team in NFL history to win back-to-back Super Bowls if they manage it in 2026, a fact he has used directly with his players to underline how hard the task actually is.

What Are the Super Bowl Odds Behind the Rams and Seahawks?

DraftKings Sportsbook has the Buffalo Bills and Baltimore Ravens tied for the second-best odds at plus-1000 to win Super Bowl LXI, ahead of Seattle’s plus-1100 and behind the Rams’ plus-550 as the overall favorite.

When Can the Public Attend Seahawks Training Camp?

Open practices run from July 25 through August 13 at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center in Renton, with the team’s annual Football Fest set for August 8 at Lumen Field, though rookies report to the facility as early as July 17 and veterans follow on July 24.

Is Zach Charbonnet Expected Back Early in the 2026 Season?

Macdonald has not given a firm return date for the running back, who had ACL surgery in February, but said Charbonnet is “doing a great job” in his rehab and that the staff remains encouraged by his early progress.

How Much Salary Cap Space Do the Seahawks Have Left?

Seattle currently sits with the sixth-most cap space in the NFL at 72.3 million dollars, and that figure can grow further through contract restructures once the new league year fully opens, giving the front office room to add more before the season starts if it chooses to.