Mike Macdonald does not want the Seahawks thinking about a replay. On Monday, with Patriots Vs Seahawks set for Wednesday in the NFL’s season-opening Kickoff Game, he told his team he did not want to hear the line “Let’s run it back” after winning the Super Bowl.
The message was simple enough to fit on a practice field and sharp enough to guide a title defense: keep what worked, but do not treat last year like a script to be repeated. Macdonald said the Seahawks should be proud of the banners and trophies they earned, while still leaving room to become “a different, better version” of themselves.
That is why the rematch matters now. The Seahawks beat the Patriots 29-13 in February, seven months ago, and the teams meet again with the season opening in front of them and little recent film to settle the question of what either side wants to show first. The Patriots are bringing 24 new players onto the 53-man roster and six new starters, a level of turnover that gives the game a different feel from the Super Bowl. Their new pieces are led by A.J. Brown and Romeo Doubs, and the Seahawks say they are left guessing how the Patriots will attack them because the starters did not play in the preseason.
Seattle, meanwhile, is trying to sound forward-looking while carrying almost the same team that won the second Lombardi Trophy. The Seahawks returned 20 of 22 starters and all three specialists from the Super Bowl team, losing only Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker, starting safety Coby Bryant and offensive coordinator Klay Kubiak. They also have only four rookies and two new free agents on the roster, with first-round running back Jadarian Price the exception among the additions. The continuity is so strong that Devon Witherspoon said, “It meant a lot to keep a lot of the core guys intact,” adding that it is easier to keep things moving when the majority of the group is still in place.
That is the friction inside Seattle’s message. The Seahawks are talking like a team with no interest in living off old highlights, but they are also the rare champion that comes back almost unchanged. Macdonald said Hard Knocks helped push that mindset by forcing the team to be itself, not to think of itself as defending champs, and he said it locked the group in. The next test of whether that mindset matches the roster comes Wednesday, when the Patriots get another shot at the team that beat them in February and Seattle finds out whether “Run it forward” is more slogan than slogan-proof.
