Kenneth Walker III kept finding daylight through New England’s front seven that night in Santa Clara, and by the time the clock ran out on Super Bowl LX, Seattle had walked off with a 29-13 win over the Patriots on February 8, 2026, at Levi’s Stadium, a scoreline that left little doubt about which team controlled the game from start to finish. That result now sets up the strangest kind of sequel in professional sports: the two teams meet again in Week 1, only seven months after one of them hoisted the Lombardi Trophy in front of the other.
Walker was named Super Bowl LX MVP after rushing for 135 yards on 27 carries, grinding down a Patriots defense that had no answer for Seattle’s ground game once the Seahawks built an early cushion. On the other side of the ball, Seattle’s defense turned the game into a rout of a different kind, sacking Patriots quarterback Drake Maye six times and forcing three turnovers even as Maye completed 27 passes for 295 yards. The final numbers told the story of a New England offense that moved the ball in fits and starts but never found the rhythm to threaten a comeback.
Seattle arrived at that stage having gone 14-3 in the 2025 regular season, then beaten the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship Game under coach Mike Macdonald and quarterback Sam Darnold. New England’s path ran through Denver, where the Patriots edged the Broncos 10-7 in the AFC Championship Game to punch their own ticket to Santa Clara. The Super Bowl LX win was the second championship in franchise history for the Seahawks, a fact that made the celebration in Seattle feel less like a breakthrough and more like a return to form for a franchise that had waited years for another parade.
This was not the first time these two franchises had met on the sport’s biggest stage. The only previous Super Bowl meeting between Seattle and New England came in Super Bowl XLIX in 2015, and on that occasion the outcome ran the other way, with the Patriots winning 28-24 in a game remembered for its finish more than its final score. Eleven years later, the rematch cuts in Seattle’s favor, and the Seahawks now get to host the team that once denied them a title.
As Super Bowl LX champions, Seattle earned the right to host the season-opening NFL Kickoff Game, and the league set the rematch for Wednesday, September 9, at Lumen Field, kicking off in prime time on NBC. It will be the first-ever Wednesday game in Patriots franchise history, a scheduling quirk born out of necessity rather than tradition: the league moved Week 1’s opener off its customary Thursday slot to make room for the Los Angeles Rams-San Francisco 49ers game in Melbourne, Australia, which will carry the Thursday Night Football window instead. That makes this just the second Wednesday season-opener in NFL history, following the Giants’ hosting of the Cowboys on September 5, 2012.
History offers the Patriots something to hold onto, if not much. Across the last ten Super Bowl rematches that fell within the following season, the defending champion has won eight times, a trend that favors Seattle heading into September but hardly guarantees anything once the ball is kicked off. Fans tracking the wider business of the sport can find more on how stadium naming-rights deals and conference realignment are reshaping the landscape beyond the field.
Macdonald has spent the offseason trying to keep his players from reading too much into the calendar. He said the club’s approach was to retain as many core players as possible to preserve continuity from the championship roster, even as he insisted the group in front of him now is not the one that won it all in February. “We’re a new team, and we have to rebecome the team that we’re destined to be,” Macdonald said. Asked whether the Seahawks felt any pressure to defend their title against the team they beat for it, Macdonald pushed back on the premise entirely. “That’s not a thing,” he said. “We’re not defending anything.”
