Seahawks trace roots of resurgence to 2024 win over 49ers at Levi’s Stadium

SAN JOSE — The Seattle Seahawks are awash in good vibes in the South Bay, and not just because they convincingly thumped the 49ers, their division rivals, in Week 18 and again in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs.

Although some of the key figures remember it differently, it’s clear that a 20-17 win over the 49ers in Week 11 of the 2024 season helped propel Seattle to the top of the NFC and an opportunity to win its second Super Bowl championship.

Seattle (16-3) faces the New England Patriots (17-3) Sunday (3:30 p.m., NBC) at Levi’s Stadium in Super Bowl LX.

When the Seahawks came to town on Nov. 17, they were an up-and-down team under first-year coach Mike Macdonald with a 4-5 record and a porous defense. The 49ers were 5-4, the defending NFC champions, and hoping to reassert themselves as the team to beat in the NFC West.

“We were kind of on a little bit of a roller coaster,” Macdonald said Tuesday during a media session at the San Jose Convention Center. “We’d had some turnover on our roster. I think we were at an inflection point of where we want to go. I think it just was just time for us as a group to really say, ‘OK, this is what we’re trying to create.’ Doesn’t matter what it’s going to take. Let’s stay committed to the process. Let’s go make it happen, and to the guys’ credit, they’ve done it. It’s been a wild journey and a lot of fun.”

Seattle quarterback Geno Smith, who has since been replaced by Sam Darnold, led the Seahawks on an 11-play, 80-yard drive to score on a 13-yard run with 12 seconds to play for the win.

It was the beginning of something special for the Seahawks, who ended up winning six of their last eight to finish 10-7 although they didn’t make the playoffs. It was the start of a backward slide for the 49ers, who won just one more game the rest of the season and finished 6-11. The Seahawks are 26-5 since that game on Nov. 17, 2024.

A little more than a month earlier in Week 6, the 49ers racked up 483 yards of total offense and won in Seattle 36-24. Even with Christian McCaffrey out with bilateral tendinitis, the 49ers rushed for 233 yards — including 99 from Isaac Guerendo and 73 by Jordan Mason.

But in the rematch, Seattle held the 49ers to just 277 yards, even though McCaffrey was back and rushed for 79 yards. The way safety Julian Love remembers it, Macdonald’s hopes took shape after a 26-20 overtime loss to the Los Angeles Rams before the bye, with the 49ers the first opponent coming off the bye.

“Mike said, ‘Listen, I have a vision for us,” Love said. “‘What if when we get back, we’ve got the best defense in the league?’ It was very matter-of-fact, like ‘Forget everything that happened up to that point.’ We were figuring things out. Figuring out each other. Can we be the best in the league?

“The second half of last year, you saw that, and we carried it over to this season.”

Seattle was particularly hard on the 49ers, giving up only 26 points in three games, a 17-13 season-opening loss with a bookend 13-3 Week 18 win to earn the top seed and send the 49ers into the wild-card round. After the 49ers beat the Eagles 23-19 in a wild-card game, they were destroyed 41-6 at Seattle’s Lumen Field in the divisional playoff.

Seattle defensive tackle Leonard Williams said the 2024 team knew it had to come together defensively.

“We lost to the Niners at home, and we knew we had to be a special team,” said Williams, who arrived in Seattle via a 2023 midseason trade from the New York Giants. “We knew we’d let a few games slip out of our grasp and to keep working harder to get to this point where we are now.”

Slot corner Devon Witherspoon was eager for a good defensive performance in that pivotal November 2024 game after Seattle had been gashed repeatedly by the 49ers and other teams.

“We had something to prove in that game,” Witherspoon said. “The first game, we didn’t feel like we really lost it. But they got the ‘W’ so we had to come back and make a statement, and that’s what we did.”

Defensive tackle Jarran Reed had similar feelings.

“It came at a time where we were trying to find our identity and what kind of team we wanted to be and go out and put on a show as a defense,” Reed said. “We just bought into that mentality and it carried on through us until this season.”

Linebacker Ernest Jones IV, acquired from the Rams in the weeks preceding the Levi’s game, was so busy assimilating to a new team he doesn’t recall it being any kind of rallying cry.

“I barely remember what happened yesterday,” Jones said.

To refresh Jones’ memory, he had a team-high 13 tackles that day against the 49ers.

Love said the Seahawks felt pretty good about their chances of bottling up the 49ers’ offense this season.

“Coach Shanahan is an incredible coach, an incredible play-caller, and our guy is as well,” Love said. “But in terms of people and the matchups, we felt really good about who we had — especially on defense — matching up with their offense. Unfortunately, (George) Kittle got hurt. That was a bummer. I respect the hell out of his playing style.

“We knew we couldn’t allow certain things to happen. So it’s our will against their will and we felt good going into it.”

Macdonald has earned the kind of reverence for his football knowledge that Kyle Shanahan has earned with the 49ers.

“We always joke about his has a little bit of AI tendencies, like he’s been planted and he’s learning how to be a human day by day,” Williams said. “He’s tremendously smart. We joke about needing a Harvard education to play in this defense because he’s constantly adding new pressures, new defenses. Even on a Sunday morning he might have something new for us, so we have to stay on our toes.”

There’s a special significance for Williams because he happens to be the son-in-law of one of the 49ers’ most famous stars.

“The Rams and the 49ers, they put up some hard-fought games with us all season,” Williams said. “They prepared us for this moment. It’s amazing for us to treat it like a home field this week. Makes it even more beautiful that my father-in-law is Ronnie Lott. He won four Super Bowls there and after the last two games I’ve been coming out and giving them hats and shirts and things like that.”