Champs! Behind stout defense, Seahawks blow out Patriots 29-13 in Super Bowl 60

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – The man who plunged the dagger in the New England Patriots, putting the finishing touches on the Seattle Seahawks’ ascent to football’s highest peak with a victory in Sunday’s Super Bowl 60, once toiled on the freshman football team.

Julian Love, the Seattle safety who extinguished the Patriots’ late rally with a fourth-quarter interception to finalize a 29-13 win, didn’t immediately impress his high school coaches in the Chicago area. Earlier this week, Nazareth Academy coach Tim Racki said he didn’t lift Love to the team’s JV team until Love was a sophomore.

“He’s the best player I’ve ever coached,” Racki told a CBS News affiliate.

Love looked like it in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s Super Bowl, easily intercepting a pass from New England quarterback Drake Maye and returning it 35 yards, setting up the Seahawks with a fourth field goal from kicker Jason Myers, who did almost all of Seattle’s scoring in its first Super Bowl title since 2014.

Somehow, the Seahawks weren’t done, adding another touchdown on a long fumble recovery from Uchenna Nwosu, who cashed in on Devon Witherspoon’s pressure. That didn’t just give Seattle its final points of the game. It sent a shockwave through the stadium, packed to the gills with green and red alike. The ones from Seattle, the ones who hadn’t seen their team reach this point in more than a decade, roared their approval.

All told, that kind of theme best captured the essence of Sunday’s game, which was won by the Seahawks’ defense. Outside of a late touchdown, a 35-yard strike from Maye to veteran Mack Hollins, the Patriots never managed much of anything meaningful on offense. Derick Hall and Byron Murphy II registered two sacks apiece for the Seahawks, who wound up with six total, piling up eight tackles for loss in what can only be described as a complete evisceration.

To earn their franchise’s first championship since 2014, back when Russell Wilson tossed two touchdowns and Malcolm Smith earned MVP honors in a blowout win over Denver, Seattle turned New England’s offense into mincemeat. And the Seahawks got a sterling outing from running back Kenneth Walker III, who turned in 135 rushing yards on 27 carries, doing well to complement quarterback Sam Darnold’s outing: 19-for-38 passing for 202 yards and one touchdown.

That came in the opening moments of the fourth quarter, when tight end AJ Barner surged through the line and angled toward the end zone, where Darnold loaded up a perfect throw and slung it toward the goal line. That’s where Barner settled under the ball, a 16-yard strike, a step toward immortality for a city that hadn’t tasted such ecstasy since Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” topped the charts.

But the Patriots had a rebuttal. The Boston natives followed with a short three-play, 65-yard drive that ended when Hollins snagged Maye’s best throw of the night, a 35-yard dot for a touchdown in the corner of the end zone. At the time, it sent a spook throughout the stadium: Did the Patriots find some rhythm? Could they come back?

New England could have gone for two and pulled within 11, which would have helped them draw within two scores, but Mike Vrabel’s team opted to kick the extra point. For a moment, it seemed like a missed opportunity. Some 30 minutes later, the men responsible for conjuring what is known in Seattle as the Dark Side rendered it meaningless.

It’s also the dawn of a new chapter for Darnold. Headed into this season, he was likely best known for the time in 2019 when a hot mic caught him saying “I’m seeing ghosts,” the New England defenders who confused him with exotic blitzes. Now he’s a Super Bowl champion, a revived quarterback, a made man in a city that needed a hero like him.

Seattle drew first blood in the first quarter, punctuating what was a promising drive with a 33-yard field goal from Myers, who wound up playing a prominent role in this one. Three drives later, the Seahawks asked more of Myers, who obliged again, this time by splitting the uprights from 39 yards out.

Two drives after that, shortly before halftime, Myers cashed in again. He connected on a 41-yarder, making it look easy, handing the Seahawks a 9-0 lead to set the stage – quite literally, in fact – for Bad Bunny to take over for halftime.

During Sunday’s game, Myers became the first player in NFL history to score 200-plus points in a single season, including the playoffs.

In a very real sense, the loudest reaction from the crowd at Levi’s Stadium may have come to a play that was not. It came about midway through the first quarter, back when the Seahawks held only a three-point lead, and Darnold dropped back to pass. He sensed pressure and eluded it, shuffling his feet in the pocket while he scanned the field.

That’s about when he spotted star wideout Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who had changed course and hit the gas downfield. Darnold lofted it his way. One problem: He put a touch too much muscle on the throw, overthrowing Smith-Njigba by a yard or two.

For the Seahawks, it represented a giant missed opportunity. For the Patriots, it amounted to dodging a 50-caliber bullet. What nobody could have realized at the time was that in the end, they would have to wait almost two hours to see the game’s first touchdown.

And now the Seahawks will have to make room in their trophy case for another Lombardi Trophy.