The Seahawks raised a Super Bowl banner and then beat the Patriots 13-10 in the season opener at Lumen Field, in a game that was ugly for about three and a half quarters.
Sam Darnold left with a hip injury after the opening drive. Seattle punted on five of its first six possessions. New England led 10-0 into the fourth quarter. The Seahawks committed ten penalties for 98 yards, wiped out a touchdown with an illegal shift, and got flagged for offsides on a fourth-down sneak that would have moved the chains.
Then Drake Maye threw three interceptions in the fourth quarter and it was over.
That's the shape of it. Two teams that met in Super Bowl LX played a game decided by turnovers, and the fantasy takeaways run in very different directions for each side.
The injury headlines first
Sam Darnold went down with a hip injury on Seattle's opening possession. Reporting since has pointed to a glute rather than the hip, and the early read is that he won't miss a significant stretch. Worth watching the practice reports rather than the initial scare.
A.J. Brown suffered a high-ankle sprain on the opening drive of the third quarter and has been placed on injured reserve, with an expected absence of roughly six weeks. He'd caught three passes for 26 yards before going down, and also drew a deep pass interference on a flea-flicker that set up New England's only touchdown.
That's a significant hit for an offense that just traded a 2028 first-round pick to get him. It also reshapes the New England target tree for a month and a half.
TreVeyon Henderson was inactive with an ankle injury, which is the other reason the Patriots offense looked the way it did. He returned to practice on Monday.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba was the best player on the field
Eight catches on 11 targets for 122 yards and the 45-yard touchdown that tied the game.
That's 61 percent of Seattle's 200 passing yards from one player. The touchdown came on fourth-and-one, a short play-action throw underneath where he caught it and simply outran the entire Patriots defense to the end zone.
The usage is what makes it more than a highlight. Smith-Njigba played 92 percent of snaps and ran routes on 96 percent of dropbacks, up from the 80s last season, and drew a target on 42.3 percent of his routes. He was on the field for every snap Seattle played in three-receiver sets.
The part that matters most for anyone rostering him is that the production survived a quarterback change. He was elite with Darnold and he was elite with Drew Lock, in a game where the offense could barely sustain a possession. Last season he was the Offensive Player of the Year with 119 catches for 1,793 yards and ten touchdowns, and nothing about Wednesday suggested that was a peak.
He's unstoppable in the literal sense right now. Seattle can't run the ball, can't stay on schedule, has an offensive coordinator calling his first NFL game, and JSN still went for 122 and the winning score.
Drew Lock was efficient, which is all Seattle needed
Seattle's passing game finished 17 of 24 for 200 yards with a touchdown, no interceptions, and a 109.7 rating across both quarterbacks.
Lock came in cold and delivered the two things that decided the game... the fourth-down throw to Smith-Njigba, and a drive into field goal range that produced the 26-yard winner from Jason Myers. He also scrambled for 14 yards on second-and-15 and then took a delay of game that cost Seattle a shot at the end zone.
He isn't a fantasy asset himself. What he is, is proof that this offense doesn't collapse without Darnold, which matters for everybody catching passes.
Jadarian Price looked like a first-round pick
Price took ten carries and added two catches in his NFL debut, and the tape was better than the line.
He looked fast and he ran strong, which is what Seattle drafted him at the end of the first round to do after Kenneth Walker III left for Kansas City. George Holani took eight carries, so this is a shared backfield rather than a workhorse situation, and Holani's runs in the red zone helped cost Seattle a touchdown on the drive where Kupp's one-handed catch set them up.
Seattle ran it 22 times for 97 yards, 4.4 a carry, which is respectable against a defense that isn't easy to run on.
The forward question is Zach Charbonnet, who tore an ACL in January, is on PUP, and can't return before Week 5. Whenever he's back, Seattle has a history of splitting this backfield fairly evenly, which caps whatever Price builds between now and then. Take the four-week runway for what it is.
Kupp showed flashes of what he was
Kupp made the play of Seattle's third quarter, a one-handed grab that put the Seahawks in the red zone for the first time all night. He caught a 24-yarder from Lock on third-and-four. He also caught what looked like a touchdown that an illegal shift penalty erased.
He played every snap in three-receiver sets and 62 percent in heavier packages, so the role is real.
This is not the Kupp who won a triple crown. Last season he finished with 593 receiving yards and two touchdowns across 17 games, and he hasn't cleared 50 yards in a game since the middle of last November. But Wednesday showed he can still produce when the ball comes his way, and in an offense where Smith-Njigba is drawing this much attention there will be weeks the coverage leaves Kupp room.
He's a matchup-dependent hold rather than something to rely on.
Rashid Shaheed remains hard to explain
Shaheed's night amounted to a four-yard catch on third-and-eight that forced a punt.
There was real talk this offseason about Seattle finally unlocking him, and he played 100 percent of the snaps in three-receiver sets, so it isn't a playing-time problem. In heavier packages he dropped to 44 percent, well behind Kupp's 62.
The confusing part is the investment. Seattle traded for him and gave him an extension, and through one game he remains what he's been... a player who can take the top off a defense in theory and produces nothing in practice.
One game with a backup quarterback isn't a verdict. But if you were counting on this being the year, Wednesday gave you no reason to hold that.
The Seattle defense is a legitimate fantasy asset
Three interceptions, three sacks, six passes defended, and ten points allowed.
Julian Love picked Maye on a throw over the middle on third-and-long. Nehemiah Pritchett intercepted a juggled deep ball intended for Romeo Doubs. Josh Jobe closed it out with a pick in the end zone in the final seconds on a ball Maye never should have thrown.
They did this without Nick Emmanwori and Ty Okada, after losing Coby Bryant and Riq Woolen in the offseason. Mike Macdonald's exotic pressures didn't get home early, and Josh McDaniels had counters ready for the edge blitzes that worked in the Super Bowl. But the aggression paid off late, which is the pattern this unit has established.
Last season they were first in the league in yards allowed per rush, first in rushing EPA allowed, and first in fewest runs of ten-plus yards. They give up almost nothing on the ground and they take the ball away. Stream them, start them, whatever your format allows.
New England looked bad, and Maye is the reason
Twenty-three of 33 for 178 yards, one touchdown, three interceptions, a 54.9 rating. Four point seven yards an attempt on 33 throws. Sixty-seven total air yards.
That's a quarterback who completed a lot of passes and moved the ball nowhere. The Patriots held it for 34:17, ran 67 plays, gained 19 first downs, and scored ten points.
Maye was supposed to take a step forward this year, and that's a meaningful expectation given he was already a top fantasy quarterback last season. Instead he threw three fourth-quarter interceptions, the last of them a throw into the end zone with the game on the line that nobody could defend.
The rushing was the redeeming part. Forty-seven yards on seven scrambles, which keeps his floor respectable in a game where his passing produced almost nothing.
The honest caveat is the opponent. Seattle's defense is elite, New England had already been beaten badly by this same unit in the Super Bowl, and Maye lost his number one receiver in the third quarter. New England's first half was clean... no sacks, no turnovers, no penalties, 43 percent on third down, and a 10-0 lead. It came apart after that.
Don't panic on him. Do adjust the assumption that this offense automatically improves on last season.
Rhamondre Stevenson got everything and it didn't matter
Eighteen carries for 51 yards and five catches on six targets for 44. Twenty-three touches, 95 scrimmage yards, and an 85 percent snap share that led every skill player on the roster.
Two point eight a carry.
He was the guy in every sense. Seventy-two percent of first-down snaps, 87 percent on second, 100 percent on third. He took 24 of the team's 32 running back opportunities. Corey Kiner got six carries for 11 yards and Lan Larison caught two passes for nine, and that was the extent of the rotation.
The blocking is the story rather than Stevenson. He and Kiner combined for 62 rushing yards, and 59 of those came after contact. New England ran on 70 percent of their first-and-tens and averaged three yards doing it, against a defense that allowed 3.7 a carry and five explosive runs all of last season.
His receiving work picked up noticeably after Brown went down, which is the forward-looking piece. If Henderson misses Week 2, Stevenson is a must-start against Pittsburgh on volume alone.
Hunter Henry's snaps didn't turn into production
Henry caught all three of his targets for 26 yards. He was on the field constantly, starting in a heavy personnel grouping on the first drive as a team captain.
Three targets in a game where New England threw it 33 times is the problem. With Brown out for roughly six weeks, some of that vacated volume should come his way, and he's the most reliable set of hands in that room. But a tight end whose ceiling is three or four catches for 30 yards isn't a weekly starter, and nothing Wednesday suggested a bigger role is coming.
Rookie Eli Raridon caught the first touchdown of the NFL season, a two-yarder at the goal line, and threw the block that sprang Stevenson's longest run. He was also responsible for two stuffed runs. Worth knowing the name.
Romeo Doubs is the other one to note, and not favorably. Zero catches on three targets, one of which was intercepted and another a drop on a play that was laid out for him.
What carries forward
Smith-Njigba is the clearest signal in the game and it isn't close. Elite target share, elite route participation, elite production through a quarterback change.
The Seattle defense is a real fantasy asset every week.
Price has a four-game window before Charbonnet returns, and he looked like someone worth watching in it. Kupp is a hold. Shaheed is not something to chase.
New England is the harder read. Maye had a bad night against the best defense he'll see, lost his top receiver for six weeks, and was missing his explosive back. That's three reasons to be patient. It's also a set of circumstances that doesn't fully explain three interceptions and 4.7 yards an attempt.
Stevenson is the one to start while Henderson is out. Beyond that, this offense has to show something before anyone should assume it's better than last year's version.