SANTA CLARA, Calif. — At some point, it became universally accepted that an NFL team needs an elite quarterback to win a Super Bowl.
“With our defense, the way they’ve been playing, my job was take care of the football,” said Sam Darnold, the starting quarterback for the Super Bowl LX champion Seattle Seahawks. “I knew that coming into the game. I did that.”
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There is more than one way to build a champion, and the Seahawks are a good example of figuring out a different method instead of chasing the rest of the league. That includes a quarterback who realized that all he needed to do to win a Super Bowl was not turn the ball over.
Seattle hired a defensive head coach, Mike Macdonald, when the rest of the league was infatuated with offensive whiz kids. They built a defense with many good players but nobody who would rival Myles Garrett for NFL Defensive Player of the Year. (Maybe they do have one superstar, and we’ll get to him later.) The combination of Macdonald’s scheme and the right players to fit it dominated the New England Patriots’ offense on Super Bowl Sunday.
“Defense wins championships!” Seahawks receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba said after the game. “We’re not here without our defense.”
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The Seahawks did have a star quarterback in Russell Wilson, but when they could see the end of the road coming for their relationship, they made a bold trade that allowed them to move onto a new championship era.
They shifted to a quarterback in Darnold who is the 18th highest-paid quarterback in the NFL, in terms of annual average vaue on his deal. Darnold’s tale, of winning a Super Bowl on his fifth team after the NFL had mostly given up on him following a tough start to his career, is rare. And while he has unquestionably become a good quarterback, nobody would put him on the same tier as Josh Allen or a healthy Patrick Mahomes. But when the Seahawks wanted to upgrade from Geno Smith, Darnold was available and they found the right fit.
“We see him each day: He’s there early, he’s there late,” Seahawks safety Julian Love said. “He’s committed to the process and he puts in the work. And above all that, he’s just a good guy. It’s so easy to love him and cheer for him.”
Between Darnold winning the title this season and Jalen Hurts — who has played good football but has plenty of skeptics as well — winning the Super Bowl last year with the Eagles, there’s some proof that you don’t need an MVP-level quarterback to win it all. It makes life easier in many ways, but there aren’t many of those guys to go around.
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Seattle didn’t reinvent football and how it’s played. Having a great defense with a special teams unit that consistently makes winning plays has never been a secret, though it doesn’t get talked about as much in this era of offensive football. There’s nothing wrong with the Seahawks’ offense either, it just got the job done with a quarterback who probably isn’t on the elite tier and was on the discard pile not long ago.
If the Seahawks can put together a champion based on sound, smart moves without an elite quarterback, what’s everyone else’s excuse?
Here are the winners and losers from Super Bowl LX:
WINNERS
Devon Witherspoon: Nothing against Kenneth Walker III, who won Super Bowl MVP. He had a good game. But the best player on the field was Witherspoon.
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Witherspoon has been an impact player since coming into the NFL as the fifth overall pick in 2023, and with Mike Macdonald’s scheme he has become one of the NFL’s best defensive players. After Sunday, he’ll get more notice. Witherspoon did it all against the Patriots. He had a sack and three quarterback hits on well-timed blitzes. Macdonald had Kyle Hamilton when he was the Ravens’ defensive coordinator and while Witherspoon isn’t the same player, they both are tremendous assets in the scheme due to their versatility.
Witherspoon can do it all and after his Super Bowl dominance, he should start to get mentioned along with the great cornerbacks in the game.
“Whatever my coach needs me to do, I go out there and do,” Witherspoon said.
Devon Witherspoon (21) hassled Drake Maye and the Patriots’ offense all Super Bowl long. (Adam Hunger/AP Content Services for the NFL)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Metrics already loved Witherspoon. He was Pro Football Focus’ No. 1 graded cornerback this past season. Now he has a ring to go with it after a stellar Super Bowl. This was a day in which his reputation got a huge bump.
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“I just made the plays that came to me,” Witherspoon said. “It’s nothing crazy.”
Kenneth Walker III: Walker will be remembered as a Super Bowl MVP. He broke a strangely long drought for running backs winning the award, going back to Terrell Davis in Super Bowl XXXII, which was 28 years ago.
It also validates Walker as a player. He had been good for the Seahawks, with a pair of 1,000-yard rushing seasons in his first four years in the NFL, but when the Seahawks needed more of him after Zach Charbonnet’s torn ACL, he delivered in a big way. /
Walker handled 27 of Seattle’s 29 running back carries in Super Bowl LX and gained 135 yards. Before the Super Bowl he had not had 20 carries in a game all season. Coming up big in the biggest game will now be remembered forever, thanks to his MVP.
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“He’s a special player,” Seahawks receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba said. “He’s a special player.”
Mike Vrabel: It didn’t seem like it in the moment after being dominated in the Super Bowl, but Vrabel and the Patriots had a remarkable season.
They went 14-3 in the regular season, a stunning 10-game improvement from 2024. They’re a young team and while it’s hard to bank on going to another Super Bowl right away, they are set up well for the next few years.
Vrabel noted after the loss he had been on the job 307 days (Drake Maye repeated that number later, so it’s something Vrabel had made his team aware of), which was to point out that they’re still fairly early in the process of building a long-term winner.
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The Patriots might not be right back in a Super Bowl, but Vrabel showed they made the right hire.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get this done, but we’ll be back,” Patriots cornerback Christian Gonzalez said. “‘Vrabes’ has done an amazing job. Everybody on this team loves playing for him.”
Seahawks special teams: Seattle had the No. 1 special teams unit in DVOA this season, and it continued to show against the Patriots.
Kicker Jason Myers hit five field goals, the most in a single Super Bowl ever, and he also surpassed LaDainian Tomlinson for the most points by a player in a single year (regular season and playoffs) in NFL history, with 206 to Tomlinson’s 198 from his MVP season in 2006.
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Michael Dickson, meanwhile, punted seven times for an average of 47.9 yards and pinned New England deep on several occasions. That proved important in a game where the Seahawks largely leaned on their defense and run game.
LOSERS
Drake Maye: Fair or not, a rough Super Bowl will cast some doubt on Maye going into his third season.
It was a curious season. Maye barely missed winning NFL MVP over Matthew Stafford. He was great for most of the regular season. Then he had a poor postseason, though it didn’t cost the Patriots until the Super Bowl.
[Get more Patriots news: New England team feed]
Maye simply didn’t play well. He was under pressure a lot but when throws were available to him, he often missed. For three quarters it looked like the Patriots might be the first Super Bowl team to be shut out.
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“There’s plays I’ll think about for the next seven months,” Maye said.
Maye has a solid foundation. It’s hard to believe he won’t be one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL for a while. But after a rough Super Bowl and uninspiring playoff run, there will be more questions about him than you’d expect from an MVP runner-up.
Patriots offensive line: The Patriots weren’t supposed to be as far along in their rebuild as they were. Having a great season doesn’t change that they still have things to work on within the roster.
One of those things is the offensive line. The Patriots had a terrible offensive line before this past season, and it was reasonable for most of this season. But it struggled in the playoffs. Maye was sacked six times in the Super Bowl. He was sacked five times in each of the Patriots’ first three playoff games. That’s unacceptable.
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Rookie left tackle Will Campbell, the fourth overall pick of the draft, struggled in the last few games as he seemed to hit a rookie wall. The Patriots will have to figure out what caused that, and keep building the line around him. Vrabel said the Seahawks didn’t do anything with their pressures that was unexpected. New England just struggled to protect.
“Sometimes we blocked them, sometimes we didn’t,” Vrabel said.
Published Date : 2026-02-09 08:27:00
Source : sports.yahoo.com
