- Super Bowl Championships: 1
- Last Super Bowl Championship: Super Bowl 48
- Claim to Fame: Their 43-8 victory over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 48 is tied for the third-largest margin of victory in a Super Bowl
- Claim to Shame: Opted to throw the ball from the one-yard to lose Super Bowl 49
The Pacific Northwest established itself as a football city in 1974, as the NFL awarded its 28th franchise to a team that would come to be known as the Seattle Seahawks.
The franchise’s greatest early success was an AFC Championship appearance in 1983, and WR Steve Largent emerging as one of the best receivers of his generation, completing a Hall of Fame career in 1989 that had him atop no less than six all-time receiving records.
The Seahawks really started taking flight near the turn of the century, when Mike Holmgren and Matt Hasselbeck led them to a Super Bowl appearance in the 2005 season, where they would fall to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Five years later, the team, led by new head coach Pete Carroll, would become one of the best teams in the NFL, powered by one of the historically great defenses in NFL history. They finished no lower than seventh in points allowed per game for six seasons, leading the league from 2012-2014.
They rode that defense, and young quarterback Russell Wilson, to the franchise’s first championship in Super Bowl 48, dismantling Peyton Manning and the highest scoring team in NFL history 43-8.
Their Super Bowl core stayed together for a couple more years, but the summer of 2018 was an offseason of change as defensive stalwarts Richard Sherman, Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril all left. The 2019 offseason has seen the departure of more franchise mainstays, including All Pro safety Earl Thomas along with pass rusher Frank Clark. So while this team did make it back to the postseason in 2018, the 2019 edition of the Seahawks isn’t the same group that played on Wild Card Weekend last year.
The biggest additions to the team were Ziggy Ansah and first-round pick LJ Collier, both at defensive end. If the pair can pressure the QB effectively, it should help attenuate Thomas’ loss in the secondary. Of course, the biggest key to Seattle’s 2019 forecasts is the play of Wilson, who continues to be one of the most un-defendable quarterbacks in the NFL when he has everything rolling.
