2 hours ago
3
Super Bowl LX was a two-score game with less than five minutes remaining. New England had the ball on the Seahawks’ 44-yard line and – after reaching the end zone in the fourth quarter, finally – that familiar sense of possibility. But that quickly vaporized when Devon Witherspoon knifed in on a corner blitz and jarred the ball loose from the Patriots quarterback, Drake Maye, mid-throw. Uchenna Nwosu snatched it in stride and rumbled 45 yards to the end zone, sealing Seattle’s 29‑13 victory.
That the league’s top defense was able to punctuate this moment, more than a decade in the making, with an interception as the Super Bowl XLIX hero Malcolm Butler looked on made the Seahawks’ revenge all the sweeter. “They lived up to the Dark Side today,” the Seattle head coach, Mike Macdonald, said of his defense. “It’s going to go down in the history books.”
It seems every great Seahawks defense earns a slick nickname to match its reputation. At their 2010s peak, the Legion of Boom was the NFL’s most feared gang. This year, the Dark Side took up that mantle. As the geek lore references suggest, both of those defenses proved rough, relentless and ready to throw down at a moment’s notice.
By retracing the Legion of Boom’s arc and claiming the grand prize, the Dark Side is set for a few sequels, too. The Seahawks not only have youth and cap space on their side, but also continuity under their longtime general manager, John Schneider. His speed and skill in assembling a championship-caliber defense in Macdonald’s second year, after gutting the roster down to the studs, stands as one of the NFL’s all‑time renovations.
The teardown began in 2022, when Schneider shipped the quarterback Russell Wilson, linchpin of the franchise’s Super Bowl win 12 years ago, to Denver in exchange for the linebackers Boye Mafe and Derick Hall, a 2023 draft pick that became Witherspoon and then followed it with a late-season trade for the tackle Leonard Williams.
In 2024, Schneider made an even tougher call, replacing Pete Carroll, his collaborator in 137 regular‑season wins and two Super Bowl appearances, with Macdonald (then the Ravens’ defensive coordinator) in a move that bucked the trend of hiring offensive assistants.
Schneider did not stop there, trading for the linebacker Ernest Jones IV that same year while spending the team’s first-round draft choice on the standout University of Texas nose tackle, Byron Murphy II. For a coup de grâce, in 2025, Schneider added the Pro Bowl pass rusher DeMarcus Lawrence to supercharge Macdonald’s swarming defensive schemes.
“Even before I got here, Mike was doing special things with this team, special things with this defense,” Lawrence said in the run-up to the game. “I was able to see it from afar. Now just being here and seeing the creative mind he has, the way he sets us all up to make plays and go hunt the quarterback, it’s truly amazing.”
Every move paid off on Sunday as the Dark Side held New England scoreless into the fourth-quarter and hammered Maye 11 times – including a brutal second‑quarter sack by the rookie defensive tackle Rylie Mills, a fifth-round pick from Notre Dame, with New England’s 310lb guard Jared Wilson caught squarely in the middle. (On social media, many watching wondered whether “flogging a Drake” had become a Super Bowl rite.) The Seahawks limited the league’s second-best scoring offense to its second‑lowest point total of the season, while Maye, a regular‑season MVP frontrunner, turned the ball over three times and posted his third‑worst QB rating of the year.
The defensive effort – backed by a special teams masterclass, an MVP performance from the running back Kenneth Walker III and steady if unspectacular quarterback play from Sam Darnold – was easily the most lopsided defensive Super Bowl showcase since the Legion of Boom throttled Peyton Manning and the Broncos in February 2014. It reduced yet another politically charged edition of the spectacle, this one powered by Bad Bunny’s layered half‑time set, to a bog standard blowout.
Andy yet, for all the Dark Side’s obvious comparisons to their forebears, they have been notably reluctant to trade on that pedigree. Unlike the Legion of Boom, which was studded with homegrown blue‑chip prospects, many on the current Seattle defense arrived with something to prove, having been overlooked and undervalued before Schneider and Macdonald handed them to Aden Durde – himself a league long-shot from England.
The safety Julian Love, who spent years buried on the New York Giants’ depth chart before Seattle snapped him up in 2023, quickly emerged as a 100‑plus tackle force under Macdonald and Durde. Lawrence, long among the league’s premier pass rushers, saw his star dim in Dallas as the Cowboys defense reconfigured around the stud linebacker Micah Parsons.
When Lawrence joined the Seahawks last March, he seemed to do so with some reluctance and a touch of wistfulness about what he left behind. “Change of scenery is always good,” he said, “but Dallas is my home. My family lives there. I’m forever gonna be there, but I know for sure I’m not going to win a Super Bowl there. So yeah. We here.”
Last week, Williams revealed that he, Lawrence, Jones, and fellow tackle Jarran Reed – on his second Hawks tour after brief stops in Kansas City and Green Bay – came up with the Dark Side nickname during a midseason bus ride. They wanted to distinguish themselves from the Legion of Boom and leaned into the ominousness of Pacific Northwest winter vibes.
But their Star Wars reference does not evoke the same feelings New England’s nickname did. The Patriots of the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick era were likened to an Evil Empire on par with that of the New York Yankees. But under Maye and the head coach, Mike Vrabel, they have become strangely Jedi‑like: principled, disciplined, and almost likable in a way that defies the old narrative.
Seattle’s Dark Side, by contrast, appears to be stacked with genuine Sith Lords who lead with emotion as they pound opponents into submission. But because they have overcome so much, not least the shadow of those old Boston bullies, you can’t help but admire these new gridiron oppressors.
“This is the best team we’ve faced obviously this year,” Vrabel said of the Seahawks after the game on Sunday. “We had a really, really good year and one that I am proud of. This game is not a reflection of our year. But we lost and were beat, outcoached and outplayed. Give them the credit.”
After an intense confetti shower, the Seahawks cracked beers and puffed on cigars in the locker room – a marked contrast from 2014, when I witnessed them spendingthey spent the aftermath of their Super Bowl win grumbling about failing to shut out the Broncos. But this year’s their victory this year was a sunny scene for a group that embraces the Dark Side, and a clear reminder that the nickname is mostly for fun – even if the misery they inflict on opponents still very much isn’t.
