SEATTLE — The 2026 NFL season did not open with a regular-season game. It opened with a Super Bowl — the second one, in fact, between the same two teams, played on a Wednesday, in front of a crowd that had, by the first quarter, simply stopped pretending to be surprised.

The defending champion Seattle Seahawks hosted the defending AFC champion New England Patriots at Lumen Field on Wednesday night, and won 13–10, a score that the broadcast described, at one point, as “about as exciting as a Super Bowl is supposed to be,” which the other side of the field is, presumably, still processing.

This is, by any measure, a new normal. The season began on a Wednesday, not a Sunday. It began with a championship game, not an opening week. And it began with the same two teams that had just played a championship game the previous February, which is the kind of scheduling the league is now, quietly, calling “a tradition.”

"I've seen this exact game twice now. The second time it's like a sequel. And nobody makes the sequel this good."

The fans, to their credit, adapted. A season-ticket holder in the lower bowl, who had attended both games between these teams in under a year, said the off-season — which, by his count, was 212 days — “went by fast, and then we were back here, and it’s fine. It’s just football now. Football is just… this.”

The analysts, who have built an entire career out of the phrase “this shouldn’t be a thing,” were, by the fourth quarter, in full acceptance mode.

“We’ve normalized it,” one said, with the calm of a man who has stopped trying. “The season starts with a championship game and now it just feels like Thursday. It’s just a Thursday. A very important Thursday.”

THE SEASON, AS IT STANDS

  • Opener: Seahawks 13, Patriots 10.
  • Date: Wednesday.
  • What the opener was, in fact: a Super Bowl.
  • How many Super Bowls between these two teams in 2026: two.
  • What comes next: Thursday Night Football, which is, at this point, a misnomer.
  • What the fans are doing: processing, and buying more tickets.

The score, 13–10, is itself the story. A Super Bowl, by tradition, is a game with more points than this. A Super Bowl rematch, played in week one of a new season, in the rain, at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday, is a game where 13–10 is, by the third quarter, a comfortable lead and by the fourth, a done deal.

A Patriots fan in the visitor’s section, who had lost twice to the same team in under a year, offered the league’s most important fan quote of the early season.

“I’m not even upset,” he said. “I’m just tired. I’ve been to this game twice. I know how it ends. I’m here because it’s on TV. It’s always on TV now.”

At press time, the league had not announced whether the 2027 season would also open with a Super Bowl, but the scheduling office confirmed it was “keeping the option open,” and that, in its words, “a third one is a trilogy, and trilogies are the safest bet we have.”