The 2026 regular season begins where the 2025 postseason ended — with a game between the Patriots and Seahawks.
During a Friday press conference regarding the newly-released schedule, NFL Media executive V.P. and COO Hans Schroeder explained the decision to start the year with a Super Bowl rematch despite the fact that the Super Bowl was lopsided.
“I think one of the things to go back to last year is, you’ll remember in Week 2, we actually replayed the Super Bowl — similar Super Bowl dynamic from a couple years ago, in that that Philly-K.C. game in New Orleans wasn’t necessarily a particularly close one,” Schroeder said. “But we saw that rematch, I think, did 33 million viewers in that second week doubleheader game.
“So coming out of that, and to the point of always learning and trying to see what we can learn from the data and the information we get, we thought it’d be really exciting to come back. A Super Bowl relevant rematch is never going to be more relevant than in Week 1, and sort of pick up this year where we ended off last year, had a really neat symmetry or connection to it. So we really love that idea. We looked at, you know, a number of opponents for Seattle in that window, but we think [the kickoff game is] a really big window. It’s one of those places where we think we can continue to build the audience higher and just love the idea of opening the season where we left it last year with another chance for the Patriots or the Seahawks and that game in particular.”
An immediate Super Bowl rematch has started the season only twice before, with the Panthers and Broncos meeting in the opening game of 2016 and the Vikings and Chiefs squaring off in Week 1 of the 1970 season, the first year of the merged AFL and NFL.
Since 2016, there have been four other Super Bowl rematches in the next regular season. In 2017, the Patriots hosted the Falcons in Week 7. In 2023, the Eagles visited the Chiefs in Week 11. In 2024, the 49ers and Chiefs met in Kansas City in Week 7. And, as Schroeder mentioned, the Chiefs hosted the Eagles in Week 2 last year.
This will be the fourth straight season featuring a rematch of the prior year’s Super Bowl.
Some have suggested that the NFL opted for Patriots-Seahawks as a way to lean into the story of the offseason. It’s hard to believe the league would specifically want to do that, since it’s not exactly the kind of thing the NFL would want to affirmatively showcase.
Then again, if the goal is to have the biggest possible audience for the opening game, starting the year with Patriots-Seahawks will attract plenty of the folks who may not be football fans, and who may have curiosity about New England coach Mike Vrabel, given his repeated mentions in TMZ and Page Six.
And, like a Super Bowl rematch, that storyline will never be more relevant than it will be in Week 1.