The Seahawks Won the Super Bowl. Week 1 Could Expose Their Biggest Problem

The Seattle Seahawks return to open the 2026 season as defending Super Bowl champions, but their running game enters Week 1 with a question nobody had to ask seven months ago. They're facing the same team they beat to get there. On paper, that should be a formality. In practice, it's a much more interesting test than the record book suggests - because the engine that actually powered them to the Super Bowl is no longer in the building. What The Seattle Seahawks Actually Lost It's tempting to file Kenneth Walker III's departure under "lost a good running back." That undersells it. Walker was named Super Bowl LX MVP after rushing for 135 yards in Seattle's 29-13 win over New England - the exact opponent Seattle opens the 2026 season against. Walker wasn't simply a productive running back in that game. His ability to consistently create explosive, efficient runs gave Seattle the physical foundation the rest of the offense operated from. Walker's since signed a three-year deal worth up to $45 million with the Kansas City Chiefs, leaving Seattle's backfield without the player who defined its identity in the biggest game of the franchise's history. That alone would be a significant loss. It isn't the whole story. Seattle Seahawks' Running Back Dept Problem Zach Charbonnet was supposed to be the answer if Walker ever left. Instead, Charbonnet opened the 2026 season on the Physically Unable to Perform list as he continues recovering from a torn ACL, expected to miss at least the first four games of the season. That leaves rookie Jadarian Price - Seattle's first-round pick out of Notre Dame - as the de facto starter in Week 1. Price didn't play a single preseason snap. His first NFL carry will come in a nationally televised opener, against the same defense his team beat in the Super Bowl seven months earlier. Player 2026 Status Week 1 Impact Kenneth Walker III (Super Bowl LX MVP) Signed with Kansas City Chiefs Major loss Zach Charbonnet PUP list, recovering from torn ACL Unavailable (out at least 4 games) Jadarian Price (rookie, No. 32 overall) Week 1 starter Unproven - zero preseason snaps Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel has already been asked about the matchup. He described Price as having "great speed" and being "a slasher," while noting Seattle's ground game now looks fundamentally different without Walker in the backfield. Why This Isn't Just "Seattle Lost A Running Back" The easy version of this story is that Seattle's rushing attack might take a step back. The more useful version asks what that rushing attack actually did for the rest of the offense - and what happens to everything built around it. Field position and tempo control. Walker's ability to consistently pick up yardage after contact let Seattle control the clock and dictate pace, especially in the Super Bowl, where Seattle never trailed. A less established ground game makes that harder to replicate against a defense that's already seen the blueprint. Play-action efficiency for Sam Darnold. A credible run threat sets up everything in the passing game. If defenses don't respect Price the way they respected Walker - at least early in the season - opposing safeties can sit deeper, and Darnold's play-action windows shrink. That puts more pressure on Darnold to win with his arm rather than off a balanced attack, even though the passing game isn't the storyline Seattle wants to lean on in Week 1. More responsibility for the passing weapons. If the ground game is inconsistent early, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and the rest of Seattle's receiving corps will need to produce against a defense specifically built to slow down exactly what Seattle does well. An unusually hard first test. Field Gulls has tracked how much New England's roster has changed since the Super Bowl - this isn't the same Patriots team Seattle beat in February, and Vrabel's defense will have spent the offseason specifically studying how to take away what worked against them last time. Seattle's Roster Is Mostly The Same. The Backfield Isn't. That's the tension worth sitting with. Seattle largely retained its championship roster, which is exactly why fans and analysts have mostly assumed the team should pick up where it left off. The defense that shut down Drake Maye in the Super Bowl is largely intact. Darnold is still the quarterback. Mike Macdonald is still the head coach. But the specific formula that made Seattle unstoppable in its biggest game - a dominant, physical rushing attack that controlled tempo and set up everything else - no longer has its best player attached to it. Price has said he's ready for a heavy workload, and there's no shortage of confidence coming out of Seattle's building. Confidence isn't the same as a proven track record against a defense that's had seven months to prepare specifically for this matchup. What Seattle Seahawks Week 1 Will Reveal A loss to New England wouldn't just be an opening-week stumble. It would be early evidence of whether Seattle's offense can reproduce Walker's specific function - the early-down efficiency, the explosive runs, the ability to stay ahead of the chains - rather than just his production. That's a narrower and more useful question than "did they lose a good player." It's whether the system built around Walker's skill set can generate the same results with a different player inside it, whether that's a product of the offensive line, the scheme, or Price himself growing into the role. A win, particularly a convincing one, would suggest the opposite: that Seattle's identity survives roster turnover better than most title teams manage. Either way, this is a far more revealing Week 1 test than the "defending champions open the season" framing suggests. Seattle isn't just facing the team it beat to win the Super Bowl. It's facing that same team without the player most responsible for the win in the first place. The post The Seahawks Won the Super Bowl. Week 1 Could Expose Their Biggest Problem appeared first on Stadium Rant.