21 Super Facts About the Seattle Seahawks

By Mark Mancini |
getty images
getty images / getty images

Can these Emerald City champs win their second straight Super Bowl? We’ll get to watch them try on Sunday, but for now, let’s all take a closer look at this franchise’s colorful characters, frenzied fans, and high-flying history.

1. Seattle didn’t invent the “Seahawks” moniker. A (now defunct) Miami-based pro football team briefly used it during the 1940s.

2. Tragically, the club’s first owner—millionaire Lloyd W. Nordstrum—never actually got to see his squad play: He died of a heart attack on January 20, 1976, eight months before the team's first game kicked off. 

3. Rejected name ideas suggested by locals included “Seattle Running Salmon,” “Seattle Rainbeams,” “Seattle Pachyderms,” and “Washington Georges.”

4. Take another look at that Hawks logo. This design was modeled after a wooden mask carved by the Kwakwaka’wakw Native Americans, who predominantly reside in British Columbia.

5. Seahawks' coach Pete Carroll has only had one non-football job: after college, he sold wood products for a building materials company. "I botched it up so bad that I didn’t have any future in it.”

6. On November 4, 1979, Seattle orchestrated what’s been called the worst offensive performance in league history by amassing negative seven yards during a 24-0 loss to the Los Angeles Rams.

7. Thanks to some conference swapping in the '70s and 2000s, no other NFL team has competed in both an AFC and an NFC championship game.  

8. Their 1985 campaign was streaky: The club began by winning two games and then losing two, a pattern they repeated three more times en route to finishing 8-8.

9. Late in a notorious 1989 road win over Cincinnati, spectators began pelting the Seahawks with snowballs. Irritated by this classless act, Bengals head coach Sam Wyche grabbed a microphone and shouted, “You don’t live in Cleveland, you live in Cincinnati!”

10. Seahawks great Steve Largent officially retired in 1989. Five years later, the wide receiver’s home state of Oklahoma elected him to the U.S. House of Representatives. 

11. Even by Seattle standards, February 2, 1996, was a dark day. Seahawks owner Ken Behring’s announcement that he’d soon move his team to L.A. was met with regionwide outrage; Behring even received death threats. But the Seahawks never migrated. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen bought the team and voters pushed for a brand new stadium. 

12. Seahawks fans are collectively known as the team’s “12th Man.” A bunch noted for its rowdiness, the sheer volume of this deafening home crowd helped force the visiting New York Giants to commit 11 false start penalties back in 2005. Eli Manning’s G-Men were ultimately vanquished and, as a token of gratitude, Seattle head coach Mike Holmgren dedicated the game ball to none other than that bombastic 12th Man.

13. How loud can CenturyLink Field get? Loud enough to set a Guinness world record. In 2013, Hawks rooters emitted the “loudest crowd roar at a sports stadium” ever documented by generating 137.6 decibels’ worth of fullthroated cheering.

14. Scientists at the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) report that overjoyed Seattle fanatics have caused measurable, earthshaking tremors on multiple occasions, most famously after running back Marshawn Lynch's 67-yard touchdown sprint against the heavily-favored New Orleans Saints in a 2011 playoff upset. According to seismologist John Vidale, the horde’s leaping and cheering during and after that play "probably [had] the energy of a magnitude one earthquake." 

15. Last year, Russell Wilson—all 5-ft. 10-in. of him—became the shortest quarterback to have ever won the Super Bowl.

16. Seattle fullback Derrick Coleman is the first legally deaf offensive player in NFL history.

17. “Beast Mode 2.0” is an honest-to-goodness strain of marijuana named after Marshawn Lynch. Distributors claim that “It’s a super pain reliever… And [it] hits you just like Marshawn—hard and fast!”

18. An actual bird of prey named Taima the Hawk has been livening up home games since 2007. Recently, he attracted headlines by unexpectedly swooping into the stands and perching atop a bewildered spectator’s head.

19. Knowing Lynch’s love of gobbling up Skittles on the sidelines, Mars Incorporated offered him a two-year supply and a personalized dispenser. Taste the rainbow!

20. After the Seahawks obliterated the Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII, Denver’s Art Museum was forced to loan the Seattle Art Museum a priceless bronze statue named The Bronco Buster as a condition of the most sophisticated bet ever waged. If the Broncos had won, the Seattle Art Museum would have sent "a fabulous, six-panel Japanese screen from 1901 by Tsuji Kako ... [that] depicts a majestic and incredible eagle—a very large, dramatic bird—on a rock perched over waves with mountains in the background" to Denver, according to Seattle Art Museum Director Kimerly Rorschach.

21. Since Russell Wilson came to town, the Seahawks have gone 10-0 against Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks— Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Drew Brees, Aaron Rogers, and Tom Brady. No doubt he’d love to keep that streak going…

Sources: Notes from a 12 Man: A Truly Biased History of the Seattle Seahawks; Tales From the Seattle Seahawks Sideline: A Collection of the Greatest Seahawks Stories Ever Told.