As the Seahawks celebrated a dominant Super Bowl victory last February, there was unbridled joy in the Levi's Stadium locker room, to be sure. There was also plenty of cigar smoke, beer and champagne as players celebrated reaching the mountain top of their profession.

Underneath all of that joy, however, was a tiny bit of frustration for members of Seattle's defense. That unit had played a great game by any measure, sacking Drake Maye six times, forcing three turnovers, one of them a pick-six, and shutting the Patriots out for three quarters. The Seahawks did, however, give up a pair of late, relatively harmless touchdowns in the fourth quarter of that eventual 29-13 victory, and considering the standard Seattle's defense holds itself to, those two scores, while meaningless to the end result, still frustrated players and head coach Mike Macdonald.

As linebacker Ernest Jones IV said during training camp, "Our standard is perfection" when it comes to what the Seahawks hope to do on defense. "When I say perfection," he added, "we don't want you to get a yard. We don't want none of that. When you do get that, it pisses us off."

Jones, of course, knows that no NFL defense, no matter how talented or well-coached, will actually keep an opponent from gaining a yard, or consistently shut out opponents, but heading into the 2026 season, coming off such a dominant showing a year ago, Jones and company will still be holding themselves to an extremely high standard.

And that brings up the question of just how much better can the Seahawks be on defense after such a strong showing in 2025? The Seahawks finished the 2025 regular season allowing the fewest points in the NFL, marking the first time a Seattle defense had done that since doing so for four straight seasons from 2012-2015, and during a 10-game winning streak that culminated in a Super Bowl victory, the Seahawks had four games in which their opponent didn't score a touchdown, including one shutout as well limiting the 49ers to nine total points in back-to-back wins in Week 18 and in the divisional round; they forced 19 turnovers, including seven in the postseason; and they held eight of 10 opponents under 300 total yards.

So can a defense that was so impressive a year ago be even better? The players certainly think so.

For starters, the Seahawks have a lot of continuity, particularly for a team that just won a Super Bowl. They return 10 of 11 starters from that Super Bowl with, with the only loss in free agency being safety Coby Bryant. The Seahawks also lost two important rotational players in cornerback Riq Woolen and edge rusher Boye Mafe, but they added veteran pass rusher Dante Fowler Jr., they have made multiple additions at cornerback including free-agent Trevon Diggs and third-round pick Julian Neal, and at safety, while the loss of rookie Bud Clark to a preseason injury certainly hurts, they return both Julian Love and Ty Okada, who started 11 games last year when Love and Bryant were out at certain times. Second-year defensive lineman Rylie Mills, who came on strong with a big sack in the Super Bowl after missing most of the season recovering from a knee injury, should improve an already very deep defensive line, and there is talented young depth pushing for playing time at all three levels in players like Mills, linebacker Tyrice Knight, outside linebacker Connor O'Toole, cornerback Nehemiah Pritchett and rookie cornerbacks Julian Neal and Avery Smith.

With so many players in the same or similar roles, the defense should be that much more connected as a unit.

"I think just going into Year 3, we are just really more connected," veteran defensive tackle Jarran Reed said. "I think we are more focused than ever. A lot of people always try to bring up the Super Bowl and all that, but literally nobody talks about it. We don't bring it up. We just worry about the day that we are in, the present that we're in, and we just attack the day. I think we're more hungry this year, too, which is surprising. We know what we have to do. I think everybody wants to play good ball. Everybody wants the operation to be well. We want our alignments, our assignments, how we take the ball, to be good on defense, how we play our style of defense. We just want to up everything we are doing."

But an even bigger reason for optimism than the continuity in personnel may very well be the continuity in defensive scheme and coaching. Mike Macdonald's defense is undeniably one of the most effective in the NFL, demonstrating last year the ability to generate a pass rush without blitzing, but also to blitz very effectively when it does send extra rushers, as well as the ability to stop the run without committing extra defenders to the cause, and without having to use bigger personnel, sacrificing pass coverage, to do so. But as great as Macdonald is, it is also not the easiest scheme to learn, let alone master. The Seahawks were up and down on defense in 2024, Macdonald's first season in Seattle, before finding their way in the second half of the season. His defense followed a similar pattern in his two years as Baltimore's defensive coordinator, improving significantly in its second season, helping Macdonald land the head job in Seattle.

If the Seahawks were able to improve as much as they did from Year 1 to Year 2 under Macdonald, what is still out there for them as the NFL's top defensive mind has even more time to fine tune his defense?

"I think the next level is just being ahead of plays and anticipating what is going to happen," Jones said. "I know we do that already, but there is a deeper level to it where you know where your problems are in certain coverages and where you can be to help those problems out.

"It's more so about what we can handle, and what's the limit to our mental capacity on what we can take into a game. I feel like that's improved. We're able to take more and we can do a couple different things with that."

The way Pro-Bowl defensive tackle Leonard Williams sees it, the Seahawks should be able to play faster on defense the longer they play in the same system and with the same collection of players. That's especially true in home games, where Seattle's crowd noise can actually complicate things for the defense.

"It allows us to play faster," Williams said. "Being under the same system, under the same coach for this long, we understand the coach's expectations, we understand expectations from each other, and we understand where we got to be and the expectations of the defense. By doing that for long enough with the same group of guys, you start to learn each other's tendencies and understand what it takes to get the job done. I think it just allows us to play faster, especially at home. We have to work on different verbal communications, nonverbal communications, and when you're in the system for this long, it allows you to do that a lot faster."

For defensive coordinator Aden Durde, the next level of Seattle's defense is the unspoken understanding between players and coaches that helps everyone operate faster and more efficiently. There is also a stronger connection not just between players within position groups, but from position group to position group.

"I think it allows an understanding, there's a lot of continuity in the players that we have," Durde said of the defensive continuity. "It allows like an unspoken understanding of what we're doing and why we're trying to do something. First of all, when you're learning a system, you learn how to operate it and you learn how to own your role in it. Through this time, it has allowed people to expand that and say, 'OK, can I add a different role? Do I truly understand like why we call this in what situation? Instead of just doing my job, I can make plays within that.' There's certain players doing that right now, and we just have to keep going through the process and execute when it's time to execute."

"I think it's shown up in different phases throughout the timeline of us being here. Last year, you saw it in position groups. On the back end, the guys were way more connected. I think on the front end the guys were way more connected. EJ, (Ernest Jones IV) Drake (Thomas), T-Knight, (Tyrice Knight) and Patty O (Patrick O'Connell), all those guys were way more connected. I've seen it this year, like the whole defense is more connected. They understand the whys behind why the other guys are doing something and they can talk about it as a collective. I see the growth as it's not just one thing that happens, it's more stacking."