Seahawks 13-10 Patriots: How Seattle Survived Banner Night Without Darnold
The banner went up, the quarterback went down, and the champions found out in real time what they are made of. On Wednesday, September 9, 2026, the Seattle Seahawks raised the Super Bowl LX banner, lost Sam Darnold to a hip injury on the opening drive, trailed the New England Patriots 10-0 in the third quarter — and won 13-10 anyway, on three fourth-quarter interceptions and a fourth-down dagger from Jaxon Smith-Njigba. This is how the game was actually won, and what it means for everything that comes next.
Seahawks 13-10 Patriots: Quick Answers
- Final score: Seattle Seahawks 13, New England Patriots 10 — Wednesday 9 September 2026 at Lumen Field, the NFL Kickoff Game.
- What happened to Darnold: a hip injury on the opening drive after a third-down sack. Head coach Mike Macdonald ruled out a fracture and called the initial diagnosis "positive."
- Who won it: Drew Lock (16-of-22, 187 yards, 113.3 rating) relieved Darnold; Jaxon Smith-Njigba caught 8 passes for 122 yards including a 45-yard touchdown on fourth-and-one.
- The turning point: three fourth-quarter interceptions of Drake Maye — Nehemiah Pritchett, Julian Love and Josh Jobe, whose end-zone pick sealed it.
- The streak: 11 straight wins including playoffs, tied for the longest in franchise history with the 2005 team.
- Free shipping: every jersey on this page ships worldwide free over $49.9.
The night in one paragraph
There has never been an opening night quite like it. Kam Chancellor fired up Lumen Field, the Super Bowl LX banner rose over the loudest stadium in football, and five plays later Sam Darnold was limping to the locker room with a hip injury. New England — the team Seattle beat 29-13 in February — ground out a 10-0 lead and had every reason to believe the hangover was real. Instead, the Seahawks won the fourth quarter 20-3 in effect: Nehemiah Pritchett and Julian Love intercepted Drake Maye on back-to-back drives, Jaxon Smith-Njigba turned a fourth-and-one checkdown into a 45-yard touchdown, Jason Myers put Seattle in front from 26 yards, and Josh Jobe sealed it with a toe-tapping interception in the end zone with the game on the line. Final: Seahawks 13, Patriots 10, and an eleventh consecutive win.
The opener by the numbers
| Number | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| 11 | Consecutive Seahawks wins including playoffs — tied with the 2005 team for the longest streak in franchise history. |
| 3 | Fourth-quarter interceptions of Drake Maye — Seattle's first three-pick quarter since October 2016, when Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas did it to the Jets. |
| 14-0 | Mike Macdonald's record when Seattle wins the turnover battle — the defense forced three takeaways and committed zero giveaways. |
| 113.3 | Drew Lock's passer rating: 16-of-22 for 187 yards and a touchdown — his best single-game rating as a Seahawk. |
| 122 | Receiving yards for Jaxon Smith-Njigba on 8 catches, 69 of them in the fourth quarter — his 11th 100-yard game since the start of last season. |
| 45 | Yards on Smith-Njigba's fourth-quarter touchdown on fourth-and-one — his fourth touchdown of 40-plus yards since the start of 2025. |
| 10 / 277 | Points and yards allowed to New England. In the 11-game streak, Seattle has held eight of eleven opponents under 20 points and under 300 yards. |
| 9 | Tackles for loss by the Seahawks defense, two of them by Julian Love. |
| 13 | Tackles for linebacker Ernest Jones IV — tied for his second-highest total as a Seahawk. |
| 0 | Pressures allowed by left tackle Charles Cross on 27 pass-blocking snaps, per NFL Next Gen Stats. |
| 45.4 | Net yards per punt for Michael Dickson, who pinned the Patriots inside the 20 three times and held All-Pro returner Marcus Jones without a single return yard. |
| 3 | Passes Drew Lock threw all of last season — the depth chart behind a Super Bowl-winning starter, and the reason Wednesday mattered. |
All numbers from the official Seahawks and NFL box-score records for the 9 September 2026 Kickoff Game, cross-checked against NFL.com and Seahawks.com game coverage.
Five plays, one banner, and a game that refused the script
The ceremony was supposed to be the story. A franchise icon in Chancellor whipping the crowd into a frenzy, the video board replaying February, the banner — the first Super Bowl flag in this city since the 2013 champions — finally hanging where it belongs. Then rookie running back Jadarian Price, the first-round pick who never touched the ball in the preseason, ripped off thirteen yards on the first snap from scrimmage, and for one play everything was exactly as scripted.
It stayed that way for four more. On third down, Dre’Mont Jones sacked Darnold, and when the quarterback got up limping, the medical tent and then the locker room swallowed him. Darnold — who did not miss a single game last season while throwing for 4,048 yards, 25 touchdowns and the Lombardi Trophy — was done for the night. Macdonald’s post-game update was the best news Seattle fans heard all week: no fracture, and a diagnosis he described as "positive." But in the moment, the champions were down to a quarterback who had thrown three passes in the entire previous season.
The scoreboard got worse before it got better. A pass-interference penalty on Josh Jobe covering offseason acquisition A.J. Brown set up the first touchdown of the NFL season — Drake Maye to rookie tight end Eli Raridon from two yards — and a roughing-the-punter flag early in the third quarter gifted Andy Borregales a 50-yard field goal that made it 10-0 New England. Seattle’s offense, minus its head of the snake, managed one field goal through three quarters. And then the fourth quarter happened.
Drew Lock’s 113.3: the backup game every champion dreams of
Here is what Drew Lock did not do on Wednesday night: he did not try to be Sam Darnold. No low-percentage shot plays down the sideline, no forced windows, no panic when the first five drives produced three points. What he did instead was take the checkdowns New England conceded, use his legs twice for thirteen yards to keep drives alive, and wait for the defense to hand him the short field. When it did, he cashed it.
The final line — 16-of-22 for 187 yards, one touchdown, a 113.3 rating, the best single-game mark of his Seahawks career — undersells the situational quality. Lock led three second-half scoring drives, every one of them after a turnover or a field-position flip, and the last one was the game-winner: after Julian Love’s interception, Lock moved Seattle into position for Jason Myers’ 26-yard field goal with the fourth quarter bleeding away. New offensive coordinator Brian Fleury, calling his first real game, deserved his share of the credit — the plan was conservative by design and ruthless about it.
The NFL is a league where Super Bowl aspirations die on backup quarterback nights. Seattle’s did not even wobble, and that is the single most encouraging thing the champions take out of Week 1 — more encouraging, honestly, than the win itself.
JSN picked up exactly where the MVP-calibre season left off
Jaxon Smith-Njigba led the NFL with 1,793 receiving yards last season, made first-team All-Pro, and won AP Offensive Player of the Year. On Wednesday he reminded everyone that the numbers are a byproduct; the currency he actually deals in is the moment.
Fourth-and-one, mid-fourth quarter, Seattle trailing 10-3. The Seahawks broke the huddle in 22 personnel — heavy, run-first, everything about the formation screaming quarterback sneak or dive. New England — including newly paid corner Christian Gonzalez — took the bait. Lock flipped a one-yard completion to Smith-Njigba beyond the line to gain, and the rest was a receiver sprinting through traffic for 45 yards and the loudest tie game in America. He caught two more passes in the fourth, finishing with 69 of his 122 yards in the final period — his eleventh 100-yard game since the start of last season and his fourth touchdown of 40-plus yards in that span.
That quote is the culture line of the night, but the performance is the commercial one: the reigning Offensive Player of the Year walked into a national opener with a backup quarterback and won the game anyway. Seattle fans know what that makes him. The rest of the league is being reminded.
Macdonald’s defense: three picks, one quarter, zero panic
The eyebrow-raiser on Wednesday was who was not out there. Seattle’s secondary lost Coby Bryant to Chicago and traded Tariq Woolen to Philadelphia in the offseason, and safety Nick Emmanwori — the defensive X-factor of the draft class — was unavailable for the opener. The unit that remained held a Super Bowl rematch offense to 10 points and 277 yards.
The sequence that decided the game started with Nehemiah Pritchett’s interception early in the fourth — the turnover that preceded Smith-Njigba’s touchdown. On New England’s next possession, Julian Love read a seam throw perfectly, sliding in front of the receiver for the pick that set up Myers’s go-ahead field goal. And on the Patriots’ desperation final drive, Josh Jobe — burned for the first-half pass interference, the man New England targeted all night — tracked Maye’s back-foot heave into the end zone and got both feet down as he took the ball away. Three interceptions in one quarter: Seattle had not done that since October 2016, when Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas did it to the Jets.
Underneath the takeaways, the volume tackling was ferocious — Ernest Jones IV with thirteen stops, Julian Love adding two tackles for loss to his interception (the first such combined game of his career), nine tackles for loss as a team. Michael Dickson flipped the field at 45.4 net yards a punt and erased All-Pro returner Marcus Jones completely. And Charles Cross kept Lock’s blind side clean on all 27 pass-blocking snaps. It was a team defensive win in exactly the sense Mike Macdonald’s teams are becoming known for: the Seahawks are now 14-0 when they win the turnover battle under their head coach.
Drake Maye and the Super Bowl hangover question
For three quarters, Drake Maye looked every bit the quarterback who took New England to a Super Bowl and finished second in MVP voting. The opening touchdown drive — ten plays, 77 yards, capped by a play-action strike to rookie Eli Raridon — was controlled, mature, everything the Patriots traded the farm for. Then the fourth quarter arrived, and with it the version of Maye that Super Bowl LX exposed.
Three drives, three interceptions. First, a sideline throw into a window that closed before the ball got there — Pritchett. Then a seam pass that Love read the whole way. Finally, with a chance to tie or win, a floating back-foot heave under pressure that Jobe climbed the ladder for in the end zone. Maye finished 23-of-33 for 178 yards, one touchdown and those three picks, and called his own performance what it was: unacceptable.
The fair reading is somewhere between the two halves. New England’s defensive front controlled the game for forty-five minutes — this was a 10-3 game deep into the fourth quarter on the road against the champions. But quarterbacks are judged by December and January, and Maye now has back-to-back high-stakes fourth quarters in which the ball went to the other team. The Patriots are still the most talented team in the AFC East. They are also 0-1, and their franchise quarterback has a lesson to finish learning.
What eleven straight wins actually mean
The streak is now eleven — playoffs included — which ties the longest winning streak in franchise history, held by the 2005 team that rode the No. 1 seed to the Super Bowl. That 2005 comparison will make every 12s nervous in the best possible way. More telling is the shape of it: eight of those eleven opponents held under 20 points, eight under 300 yards. This is not a hot streak built on shootouts; it is a structural identity — a defense that suffocates, an offense that waits you out, and a roster that produced a backup quarterback performance good enough to keep all of it upright.
The question that lingers into next week is Darnold’s hip. The early signs — no fracture, a "positive" initial diagnosis — suggest a watch rather than a worry, and Wednesday proved the floor of this team is far higher than a typical champion’s. Seattle will take the win, the streak, and the quiet confidence that comes from winning the hard way. The rest of the league has been put on notice: the banner over Lumen Field is not a museum piece yet.
The post-opener jersey demand index: where Seattle money lands now
One Wednesday night rewrote the early-season pecking order of the Seahawks shop. We tiered the Seattle shirts by how our own order flow moved in the hours after the final whistle — this is a demand guide, not a prediction of the season.
The reigning AP Offensive Player of the Year turned a broken opener into a personal highlight reel — the 45-yard fourth-down score is the play every 12 will replay all season, and his navy Vapor F.U.S.E. Limited is the shirt of the moment. The 12th Fan navy is the banner-night classic: the shirt people wore to watch the flag go up.
Darnold's is the emotional buy — the quarterback who lifted the Lombardi, now on every fan's injury watch, in the colorway Seattle has worn for fifty years. Love's alternate royal is the connoisseur pick after two tackles for loss and the interception that set up the winning field goal.
Thirteen tackles and the quiet engine of the front seven; and KW3 royal, the permanent fan favourite whose carries kept the fourth-quarter clock moving. Both are steady sellers that a statement opener pushes harder.
Six shirts for the 12s’ victory week
Jaxon Smith-Njigba Seattle Seahawks Vapor F.U.S.E. Limited Jersey - Navy
Sam Darnold Seattle Seahawks Team Game Jersey - College Navy
Julian Love Seattle Seahawks Alternate Game Jersey - Royal — Perfect Fan Gift
Ernest Jones IV Seattle Seahawks Game Jersey - College Navy — A Gift Fans Keep
Kenneth Walker III Seattle Seahawks Vapor F.U.S.E. Limited Jersey - Royal
12th Fan Seattle Seahawks Vapor F.U.S.E. Limited Jersey - Navy
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