Five Signature Moments From Seahawks History

This Seattle Seahawks Signature Moments countdown features dazzling/devastating defensive touchdowns, dominating blocks, rugged runs, a little bit of fine quarterback play and several men named Malcolm. It's rugged and a little eccentric, just like the players, team and region it commemorates.

Let’s dive straight into the action. 

Honorable Mention: Sounds Like “Craig.”

The early Seahawks wore silvery uniforms and played in a stadium that looked like a spaceship. Their Battlestar Galactica aesthetic really popped against the wood-paneled 1970s. Even their original franchise quarterback had a name worthy of a space cadet: Jim Zorn of Star Command.  

The Seahawks joined the NFL in 1976 but didn’t reach the playoffs until 1983. They weren’t hilariously hapless like their expansion-partner Buccaneers, and they received less media attention as a result. Zorn and Steve Largent made them lively and competitive, but their bombs-away approach never got them past third place in the AFC West. (The Seahawks played in the AFC from 1977 through 2001.) 

Dave Krieg replaced Zorn in the midseason of 1983, and the obscure backup led a few wins fueled by defense, Chuck Knox’s “Ground Chuck” tactics and a controversial fourth-quarter penalty against the Giants, plus weekly doses of Largent. The Wild Card matchup against the Broncos and their Orange Crush defense was the first chance many fans had to ever watch a full Seahawks game. Anyone tuning in to see John Elway would be disappointed; Dan Reeves benched him in favor of Steve DeBerg after Elway threw four interceptions in the season finale. 

Two months ago against Denver, quarterback Dave Krieg had the worst afternoon of his short pro career. Today, against those same Broncos, he had his best game and was the most important reason Seattle won this AFC wild-card game, 31-7.

After throwing three touchdown passes and just one incompletion in 13 attempts, maybe now people will know how to pronounce his name (sounds like Craig). And maybe he'll stop being the answer to this NFL trivia question: who is Seattle's starting quarterback?

Krieg, a former free agent from Milton (Wis.) College, used this game to introduce himself to a national television audience.

He played just like the second-rated passer in the AFC, which he is. His 200 yards and precision scoring passes against good coverage gift wrapped this first-ever Seattle playoff game and gave Seahawks fans a most welcome early Christmas present.

It is unlikely Krieg could play any better than in that third quarter.

Denver expected more running but instead Krieg came out throwing, completing passes of 28 yards to tight end Charle Young and 34 yards to receiver Steve Largent on Seattle's first two plays.

Moments later, a five-yard pass to reserve tight end Pete Metzelaars, which came after Krieg eluded a sizable rush, had Seattle ahead, 17-7. That proved enough to subdue the erratic Broncos.

"It broke our backs," said Denver linebacker Randy Gradishar about that series. "It took the heart right out of us."

"We knew we had to come out and throw more downfield in the second half," Krieg said. "We had been running the ball a lot in the first half and we had to loosen things up."

"I've never had any team play a better half than we did in the second half today," said Knox, whose success in the NFL has been built on ball-control on offense, aggressiveness on defense, well-coached special teams and no mistakes by anyone.

The Seahawks have had the talent to be in the playoffs the last three years. Knox crossed that threshold by tinkering a bit: he strengthened a struggling running game by drafting [Curt] Warner out of Penn State and trading for veteran linemen Reggie McKenzie and Blair Bush. Then he made a mid-season change at quarterback, switching to Krieg from Jim Zorn.

"I'm just glad I was able to get on the horse while it still was moving," said Krieg, 6-3 as a starter in 1983. – Excerpts from Paul Attner, Washington Post, December 24, 1983. 

 After trouncing the Broncos, the Seahawks beat Dan Marino’s Dolphins. The Raiders put them in their place in the 1983 AFC title game. But the Seahawks had truly arrived on the national stage, and Krieg would remain a pesky presence in the playoffs for many years. 

Oh, and the Seahawks would meet a much-ballyhooed Broncos team in the postseason again someday. 

ADDENDUM: Editor Jerry Wolper notes that the Seahawks beat the Falcons 31-28 in their first Monday Night Football appearance in 1979. Seahawks coach Jack Patera called a fourth-and-5 pass play that resulted in scrambling Zorn touchdown, as well as an onside kick and a fake field goal pass to the kicker. That game probably established the Seahawks' reputation as wacky gunslingers. It was certainly their true introduction to a national audience. But they were still rarely seen on television before they reached the playoffs four years later.

Check out this highlight reel of that 1979 game. Harry Kalas' narration (after the long Chris Berman intro) is worth listening to. It gets a little bonkers at times.

#5: The Block

How many offensive linemen, even Hall of Famers, get their own all-time highlight, their own Signature Moment? Walter Jones is in very select company for what he did to Mike Rucker in the 2005 NFC Championship Game. 

WALTER JONES: We’d been running this play all year long. It’s called “97 Stretch,” and Shaun’s trying to get the furthest he can go (to the sideline). My job is to get this guy (Rucker) on the outside shoulder. I give ground a little bit, and BOOM — I catch him to keep him from getting to the edge. They tell Shaun here, “Stay on Walter’s outside shoulder.”

DOUG FARRAR: How do you move a defender that far downfield without holding?

WALTER JONES: I just keep my hands inside. He’s fighting against me, and he thinks he’s won the battle, but look how far he is into the backfield — I had to do that (catch him) to get the block. He thinks he’s blown me up, but I’m working my hands under his armpit and the pressure’s on him. Now, he’s on the track, and Shaun makes one guy miss. I always tell people that with Shaun, if you give him an opportunity to make one guy miss, he’s going to do his job.

At this point, (Rucker’s) given up. He’s gonna let me run him into the end zone, or he’s gonna fall down.

DOUG FARRAR: Helmet into his gut, and a full somersault to top it off. Is that the best block of your career?

WALTER JONES: That might be the best — at that time, in that moment. You don’t think about this stuff when you’re in the game — you don’t go back to the huddle like, “Man, I just dumped him on his head.” – The Athletic, August 29th, 2018. 

Shaun Alexander ran for 1,880 yards and 27 touchdowns in the 2005 regular season. He rushed for 132 yards and two touchdowns in that 34-14 conference-championship blowout of the Panthers. Those statistics are Alexander’s in the official record, but every inch of yardage, and every touchdown, also belong to Jones, Steve Hutchinson and one of the best offensive lines of the aughts. Jones and his fellow linemen led Alexander and Matt Hasselbeck to the Super Bowl, not the other way around. Don’t believe it? Watch that run again. 

The 2005 Seahawks went on to face the Steelers in Super Bowl XL. We won’t rehash what happened there. Maybe next year I’ll write a Worst Officiated Games in Human History series.

#4: Something, Something, Malcolm Butler, Something, Something

Only a few days before his improbable Super Bowl-saving interception, Malcolm Butler struggled in practice defending the exact same play.

Bill Belichick lit into the undrafted rookie cornerback after New England’s scout-team offense beat him all too easily for a 5-yard touchdown.

The play was a rub route that the Patriots noticed the Seattle Seahawks went to again and again in must-have situations near the goal line. One receiver set a pick by driving his defender backward. The other took advantage of the free space by running a slant underneath.

Suspecting that Seattle would go back to this concept during Super Bowl XLIX, New England devoted an unusual amount of time preparing to stop it. Butler drew Belichick’s ire for trailing behind the slanting receiver and allowing too much separation rather than fighting over the pick aggressively like he had been taught.

“If you see that formation, you can’t give ground,” Belichick barked at Butler. “You’ve got to be ready to jump that.”

That scolding was still fresh in Butler’s mind as he sprinted onto the field with less than a minute left in Super Bowl XLIX and the Seahawks just a yard shy of a go-ahead touchdown. Butler quickly recognized Seattle’s formation from practice and guessed what might be coming, paving the way for the defining moment of his career, the play that 10 years later remains among the greatest in Super Bowl history.

“Everyone knows you’re supposed to run the football from the 1-yard line,” Butler recently told Yahoo Sports, “but my mindset was if they threw it, their ass was in trouble.” – Jeff Eisenberg – Yahoo Sports, February 4, 2025.

No Seahawks Signature Moments countdown would be complete without Butler’s Super Bowl-ending interception. The play will probably also be a Patriots Signature Moment if I ever get there. It’s an all-time Super Bowl moment. 

And I am kinda sick of it.

The Seahawks’ decision to pass from the one-yard line with 27 seconds (and one timeout!) left instead of handing off to Marshawn Lynch may be the most second-guessed play call in NFL history. All of the underinformed second-guessing on talk shows and around water coolers prompted a counterattack of overinformed third-guessing by many of my colleagues. If you account for the personnel, the formations, the tendencies, the win probabilities, and the barometric pressure, you will realize that Belichick knew that Carroll would try this if Belichick did this after Carroll tried this, leading Russell Wilson to do this … Shut up, Vizzini! The Seahawks called one of their favorite plays. Belichick and the Patriots were ready for it. It happens all the time! It’s not hyperdimensional chess! It’s guys playing a game for money!

While Butler’s interception sparked the Patriots’ 2010s renaissance, it should not have damaged the Seahawks much. But there were a lot of larger-than-life personalities in their locker room (and coaching staff and front office) in the mid-2010s. Everyone got a little too smart, too cool, too precious or too weird, a little bit at a time, until the Legion of Boom was old and shorthanded, the offensive line was in tatters and Russell Wilson was acting like the Sun King.

Butler’s interception led directly to the Let Russ Cook era and its aftermath, when the Seahawks were usually a very good team but always a much better talking point. That era didn’t really end until the middle of last January.

#3: Witherspoon and Nwosu Ice the Super Bowl

For Uchenna Nwosu, scoring the game-winning touchdown wasn’t enough; the real victory lap came at the post-game podium. Seattle walked into Levi’s Stadium with a clear plan to disrupt, apply pressure, and make life miserable for New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye. And they executed it to perfection.

“The plan was to get to Maye, disrupt him,” Nwosu said. “We knew that he’s their whole team. He’s an MVP runner-up, could have been MVP. So, we know if we affect him, their whole game plan will be nothing.”

Late in the fourth quarter, with Seattle already in control, Drake Maye and the Patriots were still looking for a way to chip into the deficit. Facing a first-and-10 at Seattle’s 44-yard line with 4:27 left on the clock, Maye fired a short pass over the middle from the shotgun, targeting Kayshon Boutte.

But Devon Witherspoon came free on a blitz and jarred the ball loose, popping it into the air, where Uchenna Nwosu was perfectly positioned to snag the interception and return it 45 yards for his first career touchdown. And now, with the Seahawks officially crowned Super Bowl champions, the linebacker has described his thought process on the play.

“No, I knew I was going to make it. I mean, it was just me and the end zone. There was nobody else.” – Excerpt from Keshav Pareek for Yahoo Sports, February 9, 2026. 

This is the most recent event in the Signature Moments series. That’s because it’s the most recent meaningful (on-field) event in NFL history. We’ll understand its full significance 10-20 years from now. For now, it’s a tidy bookend for Malcolm Butler’s interception and a callback to the #1 Seahawks Signature Moment. History doesn’t really repeat, but it rhymes, and Seahawks Super Bowls often include a defensive touchdown (usually by a relatively obscure defender) in the refrain.

#2: BEAST QUAKE

Great running plays are intrinsically more exciting than great passing plays.

Watch one of history’s all-time great passes, and you’ll spend much of the highlight’s running time just watching a football sail through the air. Either that, or the play will be edited like an Eisenstein montage. Watch a long pass from a stadium seat, and you must scan the whole field just to find the ball.

On a great run, however, the rusher is always in frame, surrounded by the maelstrom; if you are watching from the stands, your eyes never leave him. The runner is the protagonist of the rushing highlight; passing plays, by definition, require an ensemble cast. 

I’m not claiming that David Tyree’s or Lynn Swann’s famous Super Bowl catches are boring. But from a thrills-per-millisecond standpoint, they cannot come close to Marcus Allen’s Super Bowl touchdown, most of the highlights in the Barry Sanders catalog, or the Beast Quake.

But there’s more to it than that. Children learn to run before they learn to throw. Most of us played much more tag, jailbreak, or we’re just running around being silly than catch as kids, starting with when our parents got down on their knees and chased us around the romper room as tiny tykes. Dad or big brother pretends to almost capture you, but Whoops! You are just too strong or too quick for them, so you toddle away giggling. The thrill of weaving and barreling through danger is innate and downright primordial. That may be why so many sports (including early football) are just variations on tag, where the person with the ball is “it.” 

That’s a long, overly-philosophical way of saying that I found it easy to relate with Lynch when he was ramrodding his way through defenders.

"If you wasn't in this stadium to see it and to hear it, I feel that you're bein' shortchanged by watching the video. It was that damn loud," Lynch said recently when he opened up to ESPN's "E:60" for a rare interview. "That was Beast Mode."

"Growing up being where I'm from, a lot of people don't see the light. I didn't see the light in that play.

"I went forward, ran into some trouble, being on food stamps, living in the projects. Running headfirst into linebackers.

"I started to play football, things opened up for me a little bit. Breaking a couple more tackles.

"Going to jail, getting into trouble, comin' out of that.

"Touchdown." – Excerpted from Mike Triplett, ESPN, December 24, 2019.

I found Lynch easy to relate to off the field, too. He was a dude from the wrong side of the tracks who didn’t care much for the NFL media's bullshit. I’m a dude from the wrongish side of the tracks who doesn’t care much for the NFL media's bullshit! Lynch preferred to smoke some weed and be left alone to do what he does best. Again: highly relatable! 

I express myself with words. Lynch expressed himself with physical grace and fury. He spoke volumes when he was on the field. It was a joy to listen.

#1: Their Name was Legion, for They Were Many

Searches for the word “rout” are currently spiking on Merriam-Webster’s website. That’s really all you need to know about tonight’s Super Bowl.

The perfect ending to Peyton Manning’s historic season proved doomed from the first bad snap, which resulted in a safety for the Seahawks. Somehow, his day only got worse from there. The Seattle defense held Manning to 280 yards, one touchdown, and two interceptions, pedestrian numbers for a guy who has been anything but. Malcolm Smith, the Seattle linebacker who grabbed Manning’s first interception and recovered a fumble, was named the game’s Most Valuable Player, but it could have just as easily been any number of players on Seattle’s defense. Richard Sherman had an uncharacteristically quiet game before his injury, but that’s because Denver mostly avoided throwing the ball anywhere near him.

Smith as MVP, though, is a fitting representative for the rest of the Seahawks, a group of roundly overlooked individuals who combined to make a fearsome whole. He was drafted in the seventh round in the 2011 draft and didn’t even start for the Seahawks until Week 15. Seattle is full of similar stories: Richard Sherman was a fifth rounder; Russell Wilson was drafted in the third round, after a punter. But developing that underrated talent has allowed Seattle the freedom to spend elsewhere in free agency, ultimately giving them a team that was too well-rounded for anyone to stop. Wilson and Sherman both made under $1 million in salary this season; under the terms of the most recent CBA, Wilson has to go at least another before the Seahawks can even think about paying him more. The real MVP of Seattle’s Super Bowl then, was a front office willing to take risks and some really good accounting. – Schuyler Velasco, Christian Science Monitor, February 3, 2014. 

Yes, that’s right: a quote from The Christian Science Monitor. Velasco’s Super Bowl XLVIII game story did a fine job explaining the nature of the 2013 Seahawks to a casual-observer audience that probably didn’t care about the difference between Cover-3 Sky and Cover-3 Cloud.

I covered Super Bowl XLVIII for Sports on Earth. I remember Super Bowl week in New York City (freezing), the game-time weather (warm for a Jersey February, and drizzly) and the postgame weather (a slushy snow squall moved in). The game itself, as I recall, lasted about six minutes. The Seahawks did to the Broncos what a garbage disposal does to a moldy tomato. My game story was written by the fourth quarter, save for some [insert quote here] tags. The Seahawks appeared poised to be the Team of the 2010s, and they almost pulled it off.

DVOA tells us that the 2025 Seahawks were a better team than the 2013 Seahawks. Feel free to make up your own mind. The two teams are cousins, linked both by the same risk-calculating front office and their we-do-things-differently vibe.

That 2013 team, however, felt brash and novel in a way no team headlined by Sam Darnold could ever be. So the Legion of Boom, Beast Mode, Dange-Russ and the rest, including Malcolm Brown, will always be the coolest Seahawks team ever, the archetype by which present and future Seahawks teams will be judged. 

Too Deep Housecleaning

So concludes the NFC half of the Five Signature Moments series, which began back in 2025. I will not dive into the AFC this year. In fact, I may discontinue the series.

The goal of Signature Moments was to create distinctive features that were also relatively easy to assemble in the deep offseason: five "pull quotes" from primary sources, five YouTube links, 250 elegiac words each, a quick-and-sloppy Photoshop image, off to the pool. The problem is that Sports Illustrated shuttered the online SI Vault, while Google has futzed with its search engine in some way that makes it hard to find primary newspaper sources from more than a few years ago.

Back when I wrote the all-time quarterback series, it only took a few minutes of web searching to find game stories, columns and features from the 1960s through 1990s. While working on the Cardinals and Rams Signature Moments however, my searches were choked out by nonsense like recent Facebook posts about Kurt Warner and the like. Narrowing the date parameters only helped a little bit. My subscription to the L.A. Times helped more, but not when the Rams were in St. Louis. I also subscribe to the New York Times and Washington Post archives, but Google now seems strangely reluctant to comb through them for me. Newspapers.com gives me access to suburban newspapers of yesteryear, but in a rather inconvenient format. 

Writing the last four Signature Moments features was a heavier lift than it was supposed to be. The pull quotes have also been a little weaker than I would like; it’s harder to find Tex Maule or Rick Reilly when I need them. I fear barreling into a team like the Dolphins, whose best years were the 1970s and 1980s and whose local papers I don’t have archival subscriptions to, only to find myself searching for hours on a sunny July day for a cool Larry Csonka or Mark Duper quote. 

I will be publishing another off-topic, bird-feeder-type essay next week. I will also find some current NFL topics to bandy about. And much of my energy will be focused on some Training Camp Previews. Camp is right around the corner, after all. And when the pads come on, Too Deep Zone shifts back into full throttle!

If Five Signature Moments does not return in the 2027 offseason, I will replace it with something similar, but perhaps easier to research in the current information ecosystem. I am toying with a series called Remember Some Guys. If that series happens, it will start in the AFC.