History of Super Bowl rematches to open NFL season: Patriots vs. Seahawks redux is more rare than it seems
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The 2026 NFL season starts the way the last one ended: with the Patriots and Seahawks doing battle on the west coast.
Because the Seahawks won Super Bowl 60 over the Patriots, they earned the right to start the season at home in the first game of the NFL season. That left nine possible Week 1 opponents for the reigning champions, and New England happened to be one of them.
Super Bowl rematches are intriguing for obvious reasons, but they aren't all that common in Week 1. One reason is the NFL schedule's cycle, which simply doesn't put a rematch on the table more often than not. In fact, if not for the NFL adding a 17th game to the schedule, the Seahawks wouldn't have matched up with the Patriots at all.
Because the Seahawks and Patriots are each other's "17th game," the first of 272 NFL regular season games will be a familiar one.
Here's a look back at past Super Bowl rematches that opened the NFL season.
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History of Super Bowl rematches to start NFL seasons
Chiefs vs. Vikings, 1970
The first Super Bowl rematch to start the following season came in 1970, when the Vikings received the opportunity to exact some revenge on the Chiefs. Kansas City defeated Minnesota 23-7 in Super Bowl 4, winning the franchise's first championship, but the Vikings proved that 1970 would be different when they opened the regular season with a commanding 27-10 victory.
Taking place before the tradition of the reigning Super Bowl champion opening the season at home took hold, this game was played in Minnesota with the Vikings favored. Bud Grant's Vikings managed 132 rushing yards and two touchdowns on the ground, while the Chiefs committed four turnovers in the loss.
It would be a season of regression for Kansas City, which finished 7-5-2, while Minnesota went 12-2 but failed to take advantage in the playoffs with a divisional round loss to the 10-3-1 49ers.
Broncos vs. Panthers, 2016
It wasn't for another 44 years that another Super Bowl rematch started the season. The Broncos weren't considered the biggest draw for the NFL with the inexperienced Trevor Siemian replacing the retired Peyton Manning as Denver's quarterback, but it was the Broncos' defense that willed the team to a Super Bowl win over Cam Newton and the Panthers seven months earlier.
Carolina was favored in the rematch, but as was the case in Super Bowl 50, the favorite did not prevail. The Broncos overcame a 17-7 deficit to win 21-20, getting two touchdowns out of C.J. Anderson in the fourth quarter and holding the Panthers to just a late field goal in the second half. Siemian was intercepted twice in his first NFL start, but the Broncos' defense tightened the screws late and gave the offense a handful of opportunities.
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Patriots vs. Seahawks, 2026
Because of the NFL's "17th game," which in 2026 put the NFC West winner against the AFC East winner at the home of the NFC team, the Seahawks knew even before the Super Bowl that they would host the Patriots this season. The NFL could have chosen to put a matchup with the Rams or 49ers in the opening night slot, or even the Bears after their breakthrough season, but a Super Bowl rematch works just fine with all of those matchups still ahead on the schedule.
The Seahawks are looking to follow in the 2016 Broncos' footsteps by holding serve and taking down a revenge-seeking opponent, while the Patriots are aiming to do what the Vikings did in 1970 and put the Super Bowl behind them as quickly as possible.
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How many times has Super Bowl winner won rematch?
Super Bowl winners are 9-3 when a rematch is played the following regular season and 1-1 when that rematch is played at the start of the NFL season.
Patriots vs. Seahawks will mark the 13th time the two teams from the previous Super Bowl played each other in the following regular season. The last time was not long ago: the Eagles defeated the Chiefs in Week 2 last season, albeit not as convincingly as they did in Super Bowl 59.
When that rematch opens the season, the Broncos are the only reigning champion to have won; the Chiefs fell to the Vikings in their 1970 rematch.