Seattle Seahawks win their first ever Super Bowl; Pacific Northwest roars in jubilation

It’s final­ly hap­pened.

After almost four decades, the Seat­tle Sea­hawks have brought home the Vince Lom­bar­di Tro­phy, win­ning Super Bowl XLVIII by a score of forty-three to eight to cap­ture their first title and only the fourth pro title in Seat­tle sports his­to­ry. (The Son­ics won it all in 1979; the Storm did the same in 2004 and 2010).

The Sea­hawks, rep­re­sent­ing the NFC, com­plete­ly dom­i­nat­ed the AFC cham­pi­on Den­ver Bron­cos on offense, defense, and spe­cial teams. Up until late in the third quar­ter, Seat­tle had a shutout going. At that point, the Bron­cos final­ly man­aged to score a touch­down and tack on addi­tion­al points with a two-point conversion.

It would be the only time Den­ver would score.

Seat­tle took an incred­i­bly ear­ly lead twelve sec­onds in thanks to a botched snap in the first quar­ter, which result­ed in a safe­ty. Seat­tle fol­lowed up with a field goal, and then anoth­er. After that, the Sea­hawks sim­ply went for the endzone.

Helped by turnovers forced by the defense, they scored two touch­downs in the sec­ond quar­ter, two more in the third, and for good mea­sure, one in the fourth too.

Each touch­down was scored by a dif­fer­ent Sea­hawk. Mar­shawn Lynch was in the end­zone first on a one yard run. Line­backer Mal­colm Smith returned an inter­cep­tion for a touch­down only min­utes lat­er. The third quar­ter began with Per­cy Harvin return­ing Den­ver’s kick­off eighty-sev­en yards for a touch­down. Jer­maine Kearse lat­er caught a twen­ty-three yard pass from Rus­sell Wil­son, and in the fourth quar­ter, Doug Bald­win caught a ten yard pass from Wil­son to com­plete the rout.

When it was over, blue and green con­fet­ti rained over MetLife Sta­di­um in East Ruther­ford like snow flur­ries at Par­adise, Mount Rainier. Sea­hawks play­ers cel­e­brat­ed on the field and in the lock­er room, accom­pa­nied by musi­cians Mack­le­more and Ryan Lewis, who won four Gram­mys for their work last Sunday.

Mean­while, fans back home rushed out on the streets to share their eupho­ria with neigh­bors. Big crowds flood­ed Pio­neer Square and inter­sec­tions on Capi­tol Hill. In the Uni­ver­si­ty Dis­trict, couch­es and mat­tress­es were set on fire, and the Seat­tle Fire Depart­ment had to be called in to put the fire out when the flames got too high.

The City of Seat­tle announced that a wel­come home Vic­to­ry Cel­e­bra­tion Parade would be held on Wednes­day morn­ing at 11 AM. The parade will go down 4th Avenue, begin­ning at Den­ny Way, and end at Cen­tu­ryLink Field, where the Sea­hawks most recent­ly defeat­ed their divi­sion rival San Fran­cis­co 49ers.

“What a great day for the Sea­hawks and a great day for Seat­tle,” said Seat­tle May­or Ed Mur­ray, who was in New Jer­sey attend­ing the game, along with Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee. “This is the first NFL Cham­pi­onship for the team and a great achieve­ment for the fran­chise,” Mur­ray not­ed. “My con­grat­u­la­tions go to the play­ers, coach­es and to the fans who all con­tributed to win this title. Now the city will pre­pare to cel­e­brate in the way that only Seat­tle knows how.”

The city is encour­ag­ing fans to act “con­sci­en­tious­ly” and behave respon­si­bly in the wake of the vic­to­ry, so as not to detract from the Sea­hawks’ title.

Seat­tle is so unused to win­ning titles that today’s Super Bowl vic­to­ry does­n’t seem real. But it is. The city’s oth­er pro teams — the Mariners, Storm, and Sounders — wast­ed no time in offer­ing their jubi­lant con­grat­u­la­tions to the Sea­hawks on Twit­ter, as did the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton and Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty.

The Sea­hawks returned the love.

To thank the UW, they tweet­ed a pic­ture of Jer­maine Kearse with the words “Bow Down To Wash­ing­ton”. To thank WSU, they tweet­ed a pic­ture with the Sea­hawk and Cougar mas­cots togeth­er. To thank the Mariners, they tweet­ed a graph­ic of the Vince Lom­bar­di Tro­phy with Mariners announc­er Dave Niehaus’ favorite catch­phrase, “Break Out The Rye Bread — It’s Lom­bar­di Time!” And to the Sounders, they tweet­ed a graph­ic with the cap­tion, “Lom­bardis Up, Seattle!”

U.S. Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell issued a state­ment con­grat­u­lat­ing the team.

“Con­grat­u­la­tions to Pete Car­roll and the Seat­tle Sea­hawks on bring­ing the Pacif­ic North­west its first Lom­bar­di Tro­phy! And con­grat­u­la­tions to the best fans in the NFL. Tonight, the 12th Man took over East Ruther­ford and made it feel like SoDo.”

“Tonight’s vic­to­ry is a cred­it to the Sea­hawks sti­fling ‘Legion of Boom’ defense, and to the offense led by Rus­sell Wil­son and Mar­shawn Lynch,” Cantwell added. “The 2013 Sea­hawks tru­ly prove that team­work wins cham­pi­onships. This Super Bowl vic­to­ry is a defin­ing moment in North­west sports history.”

“Tonight, the 12th Man flag is fly­ing high over Wash­ing­ton State.”

Local com­pa­nies and non­prof­its also showed their Sea­hawks pride, includ­ing Microsoft, Ama­zon, Pem­co, BECU, PCC, T‑Mobile, and Nordstrom.

The vic­to­ry cel­e­bra­tion has just begun and shows no sign of abat­ing. As for­mer Sea­hawks quar­ter­back Matt Has­sel­beck tweet­ed, every­body in Seat­tle deserves a day off. That won’t hap­pen, but undoubt­ed­ly work­places around the region will be in high spir­its tomor­row as the Pacif­ic North­west rev­els in the glo­ry of the Sea­hawks’ first ever Super Bowl win, a tru­ly well-deserved and well-earned triumph.