Drake Maye spent the entirety of Super Bowl LX running for his life, and there was nowhere to go. Seattle’s front seven had been living in the Patriots’ backfield since the opening whistle, and by the time that vaunted ‘Dark Side’ defense had racked up six sacks and forced three turnovers, the only real question left was how much worse it could get.
New England didn’t score a single point until the fourth quarter, while Kenneth Walker III bulldozed his way to 135 yards on the ground and walked off with the MVP trophy almost as a formality. The final score read 29-13, and even that flattered Mike Vrabel’s men. This was a team that had authored one of the great turnaround seasons in recent NFL history, and on the sport’s biggest night, they looked like they didn’t belong on the same field as Seattle’s ruthless defense.
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But despite what happened in Santa Clara back in February, the upcoming Week 1 rematch at Lumen Field between last season’s Super Bowl protagonists is by no means a forgone conclusion. Seattle’s title-defining defensive front has been stripped for parts — Boye Mafe gone, Coby Bryant gone, Tariq Woolen gone, three starters out of the exact unit that made Maye’s life miserable in February. And that’s without mentioning MVP Kenneth Walker’s departure to Kansas City.
New England didn’t sit still, either. They finally handed Maye the true No. 1 receiver his title-game passing attack never had when it mattered most in the form of A.J. Brown.
It’s those two contrasting offseasons that have prompted online betting sites to make the Patriots the livest of underdogs in the 2026 Kick Off game, despite the beatdown they took last time these two met. The early Patriots vs Seahawks odds for Week 1 list New England as a 3.5-point underdog for their trip to Lumen Field, a line far tighter than one would expect after the 16-point margin of victory in a Big Game that took place on neutral ground.
But history isn’t exactly kind to the Patriots. Across the last 13 years, only three defending Super Bowl champions have lost the following season’s kickoff game. Can you remember who they were?
Kansas City’s road to Super Bowl LVII ended in Glendale with Patrick Mahomes gutting out a high-ankle sprain to outlast Philadelphia in a 38-35 shootout. Six months later, the banner ceremony at Arrowhead was happening in front of a crowd that had no real sense of how thin the roster had actually become.
Chris Jones wasn’t on the field — he was sitting out amid a contract holdout, a defensive centerpiece reduced to a spectator. Travis Kelce was ruled out entirely after hyperextending his knee in the final practice of the week. Kansas City still walked in as heavy favorites, Mahomes fresh off back-to-back MVP-caliber seasons, Detroit still viewed as a plucky play-off crasher under Dan Campbell rather than a genuine threat. That was about to change.
Jared Goff found Amon-Ra St. Brown for an early score, and when Kansas City answered with touchdowns either side of half-time to go up 14-7, it had the shape of another routine banner-night win. Then a rookie safety who’d played zero career NFL snaps before that night stepped in front of a Mahomes pass tipped off Kadarius Toney’s hands, and Brian Branch turned it into a 50-yard pick-six that tied the game at 14.
Toney kept dropping balls he needed to catch. Harrison Butker’s leg nudged Kansas City back in front, 20-14, and for about seven minutes, that field goal looked like the answer. It wasn’t.
David Montgomery bulldozed in from eight yards out with 5:05 left, and Detroit’s defence closed the door — a three-and-out, then a turnover on downs. What does it say about “business as usual” that it collapsed the moment real adversity showed up? Kansas City’s eight-game Week 1 winning streak died that night, and so did the idea that their title defense would be easy.
Von Miller was the engine of Los Angeles’s Super Bowl LVI pass rush, chasing quarterbacks alongside Aaron Donald in the run to a title over Cincinnati. Four months later, he was lining up in Buffalo colors, staring down his old team in the same building where he’d won his ring. The Bills arrived as actual betting favorites over the reigning champions — a rare inversion for a kickoff game — and even after Buffalo turned the ball over four times in the first half, the game was tied 10-10 at the break, Cooper Kupp toe-tapping a touchdown and Matt Gay drilling a 57-yard field goal right at the halftime gun to paper over the mess.
Then the banner-raising party got wrecked. Josh Allen accounted for all four Bills touchdowns and finished with 297 passing yards, and Miller got two sacks on the quarterback he used to protect a lead for. But the moment that stuck was Stefon Diggs deciding a 53-yard touchdown wasn’t a big enough statement on its own — he found Jalen Ramsey on the sideline afterward and let him hear about it.
A building that had hosted a championship parade seven months earlier didn’t score a single point in the second half. Twenty-one unanswered points turned a tied game into a 21-point humiliation, the second-largest opening-week loss by a defending champion in league history.
This is the one that should hurt the most to write, because it’s exactly the blueprint New England is hoping to run back on Seattle. New England had authored the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history that February, Tom Brady dragging the Patriots back from 28-3 down to stun Atlanta in overtime, and Gillette Stadium was full of people talking seriously about a 19-0 season.
Kareem Hunt fumbled on his literal first NFL touch. And then, somehow, decided the rest of the night belonged to him anyway — 148 yards rushing, 98 more receiving, three total touchdowns, including a 78-yard catch-and-run that flipped the lead in the fourth quarter. Alex Smith was nearly flawless, 28 of 35 for 368 yards and four scores with zero interceptions, and Tyreek Hill added 133 yards of his own. Is there a more complete individual kickoff-game performance than a rookie racking up 246 yards from scrimmage on his second-ever NFL touch — still the most by any debutant since the merger?
Brady went scoreless into a half his team was supposed to own outright, finishing the night without a single touchdown pass in a building that had genuinely expected perfection. Twenty-one unanswered points turned a 27-21 deficit into a rout, and a dynasty that had just completed the sport’s most famous comeback suddenly looked, for one night, entirely mortal.
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