Seahawks 13, Patriots 10: Drew Lock Leads Week 1 Comeback
Seattle survived the loss of starting quarterback Sam Darnold, erased a 10-point deficit and intercepted Drake Maye on New England’s final three possessions to beat the Patriots 13–10 Wednesday night at Lumen Field. Backup Drew Lock delivered the tying touchdown, Jaxon Smith-Njigba supplied the explosive play, and Josh Jobe ended the opener with a toe-tapping interception in the end zone.
The result is official in the NFL game center. It also flips the script from Football Nation’s pregame Patriots–Seahawks prediction: New England controlled most of the night, but Seattle’s defense owned the fourth quarter and turned three Maye mistakes into the comeback.
Patriots–Seahawks final score and key statistics
Final: Seahawks 13, Patriots 10. New England led 7–0 at halftime and 10–0 in the third quarter. Seattle scored all 13 of its points after halftime, including 10 in the fourth.
Drew Lock: 16 completions on 22 attempts, 187 passing yards, one touchdown and no interceptions after replacing Darnold.
Sam Darnold: 1-of-2 passing for 13 yards before leaving with a hip injury five plays into Seattle’s title defense.
Drake Maye: 23-of-33 passing for 178 yards, one touchdown and three interceptions. All three picks came in the fourth quarter.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba: eight catches, 122 yards and the game-tying 45-yard touchdown.
A.J. Brown: three catches for 26 yards on four targets before a right ankle injury ended his Patriots debut.
Seattle takeaways: Nehemiah Pritchett, Julian Love and Josh Jobe each intercepted Maye.
Kicking: Andy Borregales made a 50-yard field goal for New England. Jason Myers connected from 30 and 26 yards for Seattle.
Those numbers come from the Reuters game report and are consistent with the Associated Press recap. The basic box score looks modest. The sequence is what made the opener extraordinary: Seattle went from losing its quarterback and trailing by two scores to forcing a turnover on every Patriots possession in the final period.
How the game turned
Seattle’s original plan lasted one series. Darnold was dragged down by former Seahawks defensive lineman Dre’Mont Jones on a sack, limped away and went from the medical tent to the locker room. He was ruled out with a hip injury before halftime. Lock had taken only 38 offensive snaps during the entire 2025 regular season, and first-time Seattle play-caller Brian Fleury suddenly had to guide the opener with his backup.
The difficult start matched the concerns outlined in Football Nation’s start ’em, sit ’em guide. New England’s defense kept Seattle scoreless in the first half, Maye found rookie tight end Eli Raridon for the game’s first touchdown, and Borregales stretched the advantage to 10–0. Seattle’s first real spark arrived when Lock floated an underthrown ball down the right sideline and Cooper Kupp made a one-handed 24-yard catch.
Lock appeared to hit Kupp for a seven-yard touchdown three plays later, but an illegal-shift penalty erased it. Myers’ 30-yard field goal cut the deficit to 10–3 with 3:13 left in the third quarter. That score mattered because it gave Seattle a path to tie the game with one defensive stop and one touchdown rather than needing two complete scoring drives.
Then the defense took control. Pritchett intercepted Maye’s tipped deep pass early in the fourth quarter. On fourth-and-1, Lock used play action and found Smith-Njigba on a short completion. Smith-Njigba accelerated into open turf and finished a 45-yard touchdown that tied the game 10–10 with 11:28 remaining.
Maye answered with another deep attempt, but Love jumped in front of DeMario Douglas for the second interception. Lock drove Seattle inside New England’s 5-yard line. Two incompletions and a delay-of-game penalty forced the Seahawks to settle for Myers’ 26-yard field goal, but the kick gave Seattle its first lead, 13–10, with fewer than six minutes remaining.
New England’s final gamble
The Patriots still had enough time to answer. Maye converted fourth-and-2 with a five-yard run, then found Mack Hollins for 11 yards on fourth-and-9 immediately after the two-minute warning. Borregales had already made from 50, so New England reached a part of the field where a tying attempt was realistic.
Mike Vrabel kept playing for the win. On third-and-5, Maye underthrew Hollins near the goal line. Jobe established control while getting both feet down just inside the end zone, and the third interception arrived with 21 seconds left. Seattle kneeled out the remaining time.
The decision to remain aggressive was defensible: New England had moved the ball, overtime would have exposed an offense that had just thrown two interceptions, and a touchdown would have ended the game. The failure was execution. Maye’s final throw gave Jobe the best path to the football and left the Patriots without a chance to use their kicker.
What the result means for Seattle
Seattle is 1–0, but Darnold’s testing is now the biggest story on the roster. Football Nation has staged a canonical Sam Darnold injury update rather than creating a duplicate page. Until the Seahawks identify the severity of the hip injury and give a practice timetable, Lock should be treated as the likely next starter and not merely as a one-night emergency option.
Lock’s performance was more valuable than the raw 187 yards. He protected the ball, completed 72.7 percent of his passes and converted the defining fourth down. Smith-Njigba again looked like the offense’s true volume receiver. His eight catches and 122 yards accounted for most of Seattle’s passing production, and his ability to turn a short throw into a 45-yard score gave the backup quarterback breathing room.
The defense also validated the pressure-based case behind Football Nation’s opening-night player-prop analysis. Seattle recorded three sacks in the fourth quarter, forced Maye to speed up, and produced interceptions from three different defensive backs. The new ownership era began with a banner ceremony and ended with exactly the kind of defensive escape that has defined this team’s championship identity.
What the loss means for New England
The Patriots can point to three quarters of winning football. Their defense handled Seattle before the turnover surge, Raridon scored in his NFL debut, Borregales showed legitimate range, and the offense reached potential tying territory after two fourth-down conversions. The concern is that Maye’s late decisions erased all of it.
New England was already without TreVeyon Henderson, whose Week 1 absence and backfield impact Football Nation covered before kickoff. Losing Brown in the third quarter reduced the margin for error further. The existing A.J. Brown fantasy outlook is the canonical page for that ankle development and now needs the imaging result and practice outlook when New England provides them.
For fantasy managers, Smith-Njigba exits Week 1 as a clear every-week starter regardless of Seattle’s quarterback. Lock belongs on two-quarterback and superflex watch lists while Darnold is evaluated. Maye’s rushing involvement and late conversions remain encouraging, but three interceptions on three consecutive possessions are a reminder that volume does not erase turnover risk. Brown managers should not guess at a return date until the Patriots disclose the X-ray result or a formal diagnosis.
Football Nation verdict
Seattle did not win because its backup offense suddenly became dominant. It won because Lock avoided the fatal mistake, Smith-Njigba created the game’s biggest offensive play, and the defense punished Maye three times when the game tightened. New England had the better night for most of three quarters and still left 0–1 because its quarterback could not finish the final one.
The next checkpoints are medical: Darnold’s hip testing and Brown’s right-ankle evaluation. The schedule gives both teams extra recovery time before they return on September 20—New England at home against Pittsburgh and Seattle at Arizona. Until those diagnoses arrive, the clean conclusion is simple: Seattle’s defense preserved banner night, Lock proved the Seahawks can survive an emergency, and the Patriots turned a controlled opener into a loss they will regret.
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