Sam Darnold of the Seattle Seahawks celebrates with the Vince Lombardi Trophy after winning Super Bowl LX against the New England Patriots at Levi’s Stadium on February 8, 2026. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
No sooner does the confetti settle on the Super Bowl field to conclude one season than we begin looking ahead to the next one. It’s the nature of sports — and especially the NFL, where coach hirings have already been happening for a month, and the scouting combine and free-agency are already only a few weeks away.
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So we’ll grant the 2025-26 champion Seattle Seahawks a few days to celebrate what was an impressively dominant Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots on Sunday night. (The parade down 4th Avenue in downtown Seattle is set for Wednesday.) But soon enough, they’ll have to pivot toward their title defense — and it might be one of the most complex and unusual of those that we’ve seen in a while.