The Seattle Seahawks are this year’s Super Bowl champions, having bested the New England Patriots, 29-13, on Super Bowl Sunday in rather convincing fashion.
It’s not easy to forget that this year’s champs are a defensive juggernaut that the Colts surprisingly took toe-to-toe on the road in Week 15, with a freshly unretired, 44-year-old Philip Rivers making his first start at quarterback in nearly five years.
The Colts heartbreakingly lost, 18-16, with a Jason Myers’ game-winning 56-yard field goal
with 18 seconds left in regulation, and putting their then increasingly dwindling playoff hopes on life support.
With the Colts narrowly falling short in Seattle, but clearly not consistently the same caliber of contending team as the Seahawks became by year-end, as we do every year, here are a few takeaways we can look at going forward for next year from 2025’s freshly crowned champions:
It’s Not Always How You Start
At one point in time, each of Daniel Jones and Sam Darnold were their respective former New York team’s franchise quarterback hopeful across town. Each of Jones and Darnold was a former Top 6 overall pick of their respective ex-New York franchise. Now, with neither playing in the Big Apple any longer, each quarterback castoff has made at least two NFL stops since then.
In the case of Darnold, this year’s Super Bowl winning starting quarterback, he’s been on 5 teams in the last 6 six years, and like Jones, who’s been on 3 NFL teams in the last 2 years, one of those prior career stops included being in Minnesota with current Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell before landing elsewhere.
Both 28-years-old, there are a lot of similarities between Jones and Darnold right now. While Jones is a pending free agent for the Colts, I’m still operating under the assumption that Indianapolis will re-sign him until proven otherwise—as early indications are that both sides are looking toward inking a new multi-year contract together.
It just goes to show you how important patience, coaching, development, and team fit can mean for a young quarterback. There’s seems to be a tendency to give up on young quarterbacks too early and quickly.
Earlier in his career, Darnold was given up on countless of times, but he only continued to improve and get better, never giving up, and eventually blossomed into a Super Bowl Champion.
He went from leading the league in turnovers this past year, to being effectively perfect in the postseason with 5 touchdown passes, completing 61.5% of his passes, and perhaps most importantly, no turnovers.
Let’s hope that Jones can follow a similar career path and trajectory approaching his early 30s. Like I said, it’s not always how you start, but how you finish—and every stop of an NFL journey can be of the utmost importance.
Here’s hoping Jones has found his forever home in Indy and will be eventually guiding a future Super Bowl Champion himself to the promised land.
Seattle Pass Rushing Depth Dominated with QB Pressures
It’s interesting because this Seattle Seahawks defensive front didn’t have a Von Miller, Dwight Freeney, or Reggie White of prior Super Bowl winning defensive lines that anchors their pass rush.
Specifically, this past season, no Seahawks pass rusher had more than 7.0 sacks individually, which are less than the 8.5 total sacks that Colts’ 2nd year end rusher Laiatu Latu had in 2025—and a few away from double-digits.
It’s interesting because Seattle actually had the 6th fewest team sacks in the NFL (27) this past season, even less than the pass rushing challenged Colts (29).
That being said, the Seahawks had four pass rushers who recorded 7.0 total sacks and consistently filled the advanced stat sheet with opposing QB pressures, so it was that pass rushing depth that routinely wore out New England up front.
Deploying a death-by-committee approach, the Seahawks have a number of impact pass rushers who can consistently get after the quarterback, disrupt, and pressure, even if they lack a Myles Garrett prime time.
For the Colts, we’ve seen in the past, longtime general manager Chris Ballard stock pile first round capital and 2nd round picks into reinforcing and strengthening the trenches along the defensive line.
The problem is, outside of defensive tackle DeForest Buckner, and the fairly encouraging early returns on Latu, there’s not been a whole lot of consistent impact pass rushing output given the other early picks that have been used on prior edge rushers by Ballard: Kemoko Turay, Tyquan Lewis, Ben Banogu, Dayo Odeyingbo, Kwity Paye, etc. It’s worth noting that 2025 rookie 2nd round pick JT Tuimoloau appeared in 13 games this past year with 0 sacks and 14 total pressures, at times being a healthy scratch. There’s not really an end in sight right now.
Ballard’s theory to build along the defensive line has been spot on, he just hasn’t been able to hit on his picks at a high enough rate and properly execute.
Approaching a decade now of his lengthy tenure, it’ll be interesting to see if that ability actually improves this offseason—or whether the Colts seek to bring in an impact free agent outside pass rusher to correct it entirely.
