(WSVN) – With just two days to go until the Super Bowl showdown between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots, the stage is set for both teams to battle for glory over the last 60 minutes of the 2025-2026 NFL season.
While many fans will be throwing parties and tuning in to catch Bad Bunny’s highly anticipated halftime show performance, players and coaches for the Seahawks and Patriots are laser-focused on their opponents.
Seattle hopes to secure its second Lombardi Trophy in franchise history, while New England looks to win its seventh title, which would set an NFL record.
As of Friday afternoon, New England is a 4.5-point underdog to Seattle in the big game.
The Patriots finished the regular season with a 14-3 record, a remarkable turnaround after finishing 4-13 in the 2024-2025 season in quarterback Drake Maye’s rookie campaign.
This would be New England’s first Super Bowl victory since 2019, when Tom Brady led the Patriots to a 13-3 win over the Los Angeles Rams.
Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel said his team’s journey to success is due to their commitment to every game and positioning themselves in the best possible spot to reach the Super Bowl.
“We always talk about how you have to continue to improve as the season goes along to give yourself a chance to make the tournament and be in the playoffs and ultimately get to where we are today,” said Vrabel. “Just try to focus on where I’m at and being present and doing what I feel like is best for the football team.”
In Maye’s second NFL season, he’s made incredible strides as a leader of the Patriots’ offense, throwing for just shy of 4,400 yards and 31 touchdowns. Maye also finished just one first-place vote behind Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford for league MVP honors.
“From this year to last year, just the two sides of the NFL, of what it’s like, you know, the business side of it, the losses, the wins, what makes it worth it, why everybody wants to get to this game so bad, why the teams are fighting so hard to get to the Super Bowl,” said Maye. “You know why now.”
As for the Seahawks, their last championship came in 2014 during the Legion of Boom’s dominant 43-8 win over the Denver Broncos.
This time around, they’re led by quarterback Sam Darnold and the league’s best defense.
Just two years ago, Darnold served as a backup for the San Francisco 49ers. Now, he’s the key piece of an explosive Seahawks offense that loves to air it out and make splashy plays.
During the 2025-2026 season, Darnold threw for more than 4,000 yards and 25 touchdowns.
“I don’t think I’m ever competing with the other quarterback. I never thought about it like that. I’m always competing against their defense and just trying to do what I can do to move the ball down the field, execute, and put the ball in the end zone at the end of the day, and also protect the football,” said Darnold.
Over the past several days, both teams have been working hard on the practice field in their final preparations.
With less than 48 hours to go before their showdown at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said his players are feeling ready.
“We’ve practiced the amount of reps and intensity on what we feel like, what we need to do to play our best football, so we just got to make sure we handle it and handle it the right way and probably gonna be over-careful, overcautious at this point to make sure we’re rolling going into the weekend,” said Macdonald.
This Super Bowl also represents a rematch, as the Patriots defeated the Seahawks 28-24 after Seattle threw a heartbreaking goal-line interception in the closing seconds of the game after Brady led his team to a 14-point fourth-quarter comeback.
Sunday’s game will be broadcast across more than 100 countries and 30 different languages.
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