Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Kicking off our Super Bowl coverage this week. Every year we do a show with our two beatwriters who covered the team for the athletic. It's one of my favorite shows that we do every year. It's a great way to kick off Super Bowl week. Just kind of looking back at the journey those two teams took to this moment. That's what we did again

this year. Chad Graff, who covers the Patriots for us, joined us first to chat about just a shocking

season for a 4 and 13 team from 2024 somehow getting to the doorstep of a championship.

Then chat with Michael Sean Duggar, who covers the Seahawks for us, just about all of the

bets that went right for the Seahawks this offseason

and how the Mike McDonald era has turned into everything Seattle could have hoped.

So let's get to those conversations with both of those guys right now.

Joining us now, it is our wonderful Patriots writer here at The Athletic. Chad Graff, Chad, great to see you, man. Yeah, thank you for having me. What a setup this year? I'm excited. At what point or at any point during this offseason, did you think that you would be covering the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl? Oh, off season, not at all. I thought you were going to say season.

No, we'll get there.

Even then I was going to say, boy, not so pretty way. But offseason, no, I thought maybe this team had a chance to be a wild card team, did not think anything more than that. I remember when they were spending all this money in free agency, but that's kind of where I want to start, right? And so this offseason specifically, they're extremely aggressive.

The total number of guaranteed money... all this money in free agency. That's kind of where I want to start, right? And so this offseason specifically, they're extremely aggressive.

The total number of guaranteed money handed out by the Patriots this spring, $193 million,

which is about $40 million in any other team in the league.

And you look at teams that spend like that in free agency. And typically there is like a one-year bump that comes that, but usually typically you'll stall out in the divisional round. Because if you're doing that, if you're spending to that extent, you mostly don't have enough in-house talent on the roster. It's why you have to spend to that level. But you look at the contracts that they handed out. And then when they were doing it, I was like, a lot of this stuff is not going to age well. Because it so rarely does for teams that are that aggressive and free agency. And then each one, if you take them individually, Milton Williams signs for $26 million a year, which is second in AIV among all defensive tackles. Those contracts don't tend to pan out very well. You sign Carlton Davis, a third contract corner for $54 million.

Stefan Diggs at 31 coming off of a torn ACL. Every single one of those moves, and then even if you go

further down to the mid-range deals, to the smaller deals, this is like flipping a flush in free agency

over and over and over again in a way that I cannot remember.

And it feels like that as much as anything has kind of driven them to this point.

Totally. And that's the perfect analogy. I've been searching for the right way to explain

how this happened. And I love flipping a flush because every one of those, you go into it and

you're like, ah, 80% chance this looks ugly in a while.

You keep going.

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