The Seattle Seahawks open their 2026 regular season at home against the Patriots on Wednesday night, and the first game of the title-defense year comes with Super Bowl LX hanging over it. Seattle begins the season in the same spotlight it earned by winning its second Super Bowl title in franchise history.
Julian Edelman made clear on Tuesday's edition of The Herd that he is big on Seattle. He pointed to the Seahawks returning 20 of 22 starters and said Sam Darnold was angry about his Super Bowl performance, a sign, in his view, that the quarterback is carrying the right edge into his first full season under center for Seattle. Edelman also called the group one he was “so impressed with” and said the roster looks like “a storm brewing to just wipe out a lot of teams.”
The reason the Seahawks schedule 2026 draw matters is that Seattle is not coming in as a team trying to climb back to relevance. It is the defending champion after a 14-3 season that produced a franchise-record 14 regular-season wins, the NFC West title for the first time since 2020 and a second championship in franchise history. That makes the opener more than a showcase; it is the first test of a team that has already shown it can carry a season from September all the way to the Super Bowl.
Seattle also spent the offseason protecting the core behind that run. The Seahawks lost offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak to the Raiders and replaced him with Brian Fleury, while the defense kept Aden Durde for a third season. The roster was reinforced with long-term deals for Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Devon Witherspoon, Leonard Williams, Rashid Shaheed and Josh Jobe, and the team added Jadarian Price with the No. 32 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft.
The challenge is that the team waiting in the opener is not arriving empty-handed. The Patriots come in for a rematch of Super Bowl LX, and the date on the calendar gives Seattle no easing-in period. The Seahawks have the profile of a dominant returning team, but Wednesday night asks them to prove it immediately, in front of their own crowd, against the opponent attached to the one result that still defines them.
That is why the opener carries the most weight on the schedule. Seattle can spend the rest of the 2026 NFL season living up to the praise, but the first answer comes right away: whether Sam Darnold and the Seahawks still look like champions when the rematch begins.
