Making any long-term team-building philosophical judgements based upon one game is bad process. There’s no way around it. Football is too complicated of a team sport with too many variables (one of which is luck) for a single contest (even a championship one) to provide the unequivocal truth about the methodology by which your favorite team should build its roster.
So why would I even write an article about the Seattle Seahawks’ Super Bowl LX victory over the New England Patriots if nothing can be gleaned from it? Because some observations aren’t just about this singular game; they’re about the way the league is trending, and the current team-building meta to increase the probability of your team’s success.
As the Buffalo Bills go through their first offseason with a new coach in almost a decade, where should their energies be focused apart from the specific positional needs that I’m sure we’ll talk about throughout the entire offseason?
Winning with 4 is still a massive advantage on the defensive side of the ball
Buffalo’s defense displayed a massive pattern in 2025: they didn’t get enough pressure on the opposing quarterback in the first half, so they increased their blitz numbers in the second half. And for the most part, it was the preferred strategy. The Bills had a passer rating against their coverage about 12 points lower in the second half (73.6) versus the first half (85.1) and had a TD:INT ratio of 9:9 (insert Captain Holt joke here) against them in the second half compared to 10:4 in the first half.
Ideally, they wouldn’t have to blitz more in the second half because they’d consistently be getting pressure with their front four. The last few Super Bowl champions (Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, and now the Seahawks) have all been able to generate consistent pressure on the opposing quarterback without the need to commit extra pass rushers to the plan.
Buffalo struggled with injuries to their best defensive pass rusher (defensive tackle Ed Oliver) in 2025 and while he remains on track to enter 2026 healthy, the seemingly never-ending task of tweaking the defensive line once again remains on the table this offseason. Las Vegas Raiders edge rusher Maxx Crosby is a superstar whose name has been thrown about in trade talks already this offseason, with Jay Glazer of Fox Sports reporting that the 28-year old is “done” with the team. Crosby seems to be a top target for a team if they wish to address a major contributing factor to other Super Bowl teams’ success — and that something the Bills do not currently possess.
Having a great team is still more important than just having the better QB
Very few people believe Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold is an elite-level NFL quarterback. But he’s a solid starter who’s a good quarterback for a talented team and a good coach. Seattle general manager John Schneider is one of the best in the business, and his consistent ability to hit on draft picks has helped keep the Seahawks talented while fielding a roster than will have the sixth-most cap space in the NFL in 2026.
The quarterbacks who’ve played on the teams that have won the plurality of Super Bowls in recent years (Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes) shifted the narrative towards “the best quarterbacks win Super Bowls” — but Brady and Mahomes also distracted analysts from how well-coached and talented the New England Patriots and Chiefs were in those years.
The back-to-back Super Bowl victories by talented teams with non-elite quarterbacks (Darnold and Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts) have done a good job of revitalizing a talking point that got lost in the “QB WINZ” conversations of the last decade: football is a team sport and the best teams have the highest probability of making it. The quarterback is an important part of that and the Bills have their guy in 2024 NFL MVP Josh Allen, but quarterbacks need help from a talented roster with good coaching.
The running game still matters
It’s still a passing league. Passing the football remains more efficient than running it even in a season where NFL defenses continued to hold the points per game per team right around the 23.0 mark (the NFL peaked at 24.8 in 2020) while allowing fewer yards per game (326.6) than any season since 2007. While we can assume some of this is influenced by the changes made to the kickoff rules and starting field position, NFL defenses are still playing two-high at a meaningful rate and deciding to focus on stopping opponent passing attacks from generating explosive plays down the field. San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan remarked during a Super Bowl pregame segment that the Seahawks’ defense will stay two-high with very deep safeties until an offense proves they can run the ball.
Being able to stop the run with two high safeties is something Seattle head coach Mike Macdonald believes in strongly (and something former Bills head coach Sean McDermott believed in), but Buffalo wasn’t always able to consistently do it and the inverse is true for offenses. So on the offensive side of the ball, moving away from what worked on the ground for the Bills in 2025 feel ill-advised, while on the defensive side of the ball, yet another point of emphasis is placed on the front seven — which is likely to see more tweaks as the defense transitions to new defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard’s vision.
…and that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I’m Bruce Nolan with Buffalo Rumblings. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @BruceExclusive and look for new episodes of “The Bruce Exclusive” every Thursday on the Rumblings Cast Network — see more in my LinkTree!