A championship title is up for grabs on Sunday, but that’s not the only thing at stake in Super Bowl LX.
When the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks take the field in Santa Clara, there are narratives to rewrite, new chapters to open, and legacies to build.
Here’s a look at everything on the line this Sunday.
Sam Darnold
For nearly a decade, Sam Darnold’s career has been defined by the labels other people put on him. And there have been many. First, he was considered the consensus “safe pick” of the 2018 draft class, then crowned saviour and franchise future for the Jets after being selected third overall by New York. Within three years, he was branded a “bust” — a label that stuck to him during his two years in Carolina, then one season in San Francisco, with both stops furthering the narrative that he’d been relegated to career backup. He was slated to play the same role in Minnesota when he signed with the Vikings, but instead wore a new and more hopeful label: Comeback story. In the year that followed, we referred to him as the Vikings’ reclamation project, then a pending free agent, then a hot name on a cool QB market, a journeyman and, of course, finally, a Seahawk.
Now, after a season at the helm of Seattle’s explosive offence, he’s a Super Bowl starting quarterback. And he’s not just along for the ride. While Seattle’s defence was the biggest reason why the Seahawks claimed the top seed in the NFC, Darnold’s gusty performance against the Rams in the conference championship is the primary reason the club is back in the Super Bowl for the first time since 2015.
Now, how we talk about Darnold after Sunday’s game is wholly up to the player himself. He is, at last, in position to define what his own NFL legacy is. A victory on Sunday would see him usher in this new chapter of his career with a real statement — and a label coveted by all who play: Super Bowl champ.
Drake Maye
In just his second season as a pro, Drake Maye is already in rarified air. At 23 years and 162 days old, he can surpass Ben Roethlisberger as the youngest starting QB to win the Super Bowl (Roethlisberger was 25 days shy of his 24th birthday when his Steelers defeated the Seahawks in Super Bowl XL).
The near-instant success Maye has had at the helm of New England is reminiscent of the rapid rise of a certain other Patriots QB. Tom Brady, too, led the Patriots to the Super Bowl in his second pro season, going 4-0 in his first four playoff appearances at age 24. A win Sunday would see Maye match that feat.
Obviously, Maye is not Brady — he’ll need eight more Super Bowl appearances and six rings to match the GOAT’s accomplishments in New England. But we can appreciate the budding career of the young franchise QB without saddling him with near-impossible expectations. For a franchise defined by two decades of dominance under the Brady-Belichick dynasties, Sunday brings an opportunity to open the beginning of the Maye-Vrabel era and appreciate it in its own right.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba
After breaking out in his second season last year, Jaxon Smith-Njigba took over highlight reels in 2025 with an incredible campaign that put his chemistry with Sam Darnold on full display. Over the course of 17 regular-season games, Smith-Njigba averaged 15.1 yards per catch and totalled a league-leading 1,793 yards. It’s no surprise he was honoured as the NFL’s offensive player of the year as a result.
With Darnold throwing him dimes against the L.A. Rams in the NFC Championship, we saw JSN at his best — including that casual one-handed grab we’ve all watched at least 20 times by now. That performance gave us all a front-row seat to a masterclass in catches, considering Rams WR1 Puka Nacua was on the other side of the matchup.
Another masterful performance for JSN on the Super Bowl stage would solidify his status as one of the biggest stars in today’s NFL, which has no shortage of dynamic offensive weapons. It would also make him the youngest wide receiver to lead the league in receiving yards and then go on to win the Super Bowl in the same season. At 24 years and 359 days, come Sunday, he’d be in a league of his own in that respect.
The last WR to lead the NFL in receiving yards and hoist the Lombardi Trophy in the same season? His own teammate, Cooper Kupp.
Mike Vrabel
Already a well-respected coach from his time in Tennessee, Mike Vrabel’s homecoming in New England has been one of the best stories of the 2025 season. It’s hard to look at a franchise with such a winning tradition from the Bill Belichick days and call it a Cinderella story, but it’s still wildly impressive to see what Vrabel has done in such a short time with this organization.
Even before being named the new head coach in New England in January 2025, Vrabel was already a Patriots legend. As a longtime linebacker, he helped lead the club’s fearsome defence to three Super Bowl titles during the first dynasty years of the early 2000s.
That he just took over a 4-13 squad and turned it into a 13-win powerhouse, complete with a division title and a berth in Super Bowl LX in the span of a single year, makes Vrabel a franchise icon on the field and on the sidelines. He was awarded coach-of-the-year honours for his remarkable turnaround, and can put the cherry on top of an incredible year this weekend. If he can guide the Patriots to a win on Sunday, Vrabel will become the first coach to take a losing team and turn it into a Super Bowl-winning squad in his first season. He can also become the first person to win a Super Bowl as both a player and a head coach with the same franchise.
Mike Macdonald
Mike Macdonald is a defensive mastermind. His work at the helm of the Baltimore Ravens’ top-ranked defence in 2023 earned him the top job in Seattle, and in the two years since he took over as head coach, the Seahawks have become a fearsome unit. That he posted back-to-back double-digit-win seasons in his first two years on Seattle’s sideline is incredibly impressive. That he did so with two different quarterbacks adds to that feat. A Super Bowl victory in Year 2 would solidify his status as one of the best coaches in the game today and would also mark a major victory for the defensively inclined.
As the saying goes, defence wins championships. But recent Super Bowls have seen offensive-minded head coaches take over the spotlight, and hiring cycles have reflected that.
Recent coaching trends have seen offensive co-ordinators getting the most attention on the hiring circuit, but Macdonald’s success — and Vrabel’s too — could sway the trend in the other direction. The last defence-first head coach to win the Super Bowl was Bill Belichick.
For Macdonald, there’s a little more history on the line. Not only can a win over the Patriots help ease the sting of football’s most shocking loss against the franchise in 2015, but he could also add his name to an impressive list. At just 38 years old, a win on Sunday would make Macdonald the third-youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl in NFL history, after Sean McVay and Mike Tomlin, both of whom were 36 when they won.
