The Seahawks-49ers Rivalry Is Back, and the NFL Is Better Off for It

When I started covering the NFL in 2011, the last version of the Seahawks-49ers rivalry was still in its infancy. The Niners went to the NFC championship game that season, but lost to the Giants in a wild contest that was swung by Kyle Williams’s botched punt return. Seattle hadn’t quite reached the same heights, finishing just 7-9 that year, but the bones of the dominant Legion of Boom teams were already in place. Marshawn Lynch had rushed for more than 1,200 yards in his first full season with the franchise, and young building blocks like Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor, Richard Sherman, Doug Baldwin, and K.J. Wright were starting to make an impact. The embers of a rivalry may have been there, but things really ignited in 2012.

That’s the year Seattle drafted Russell Wilson and the Niners transitioned from Alex Smith to Colin Kaepernick at quarterback. Over the next two seasons, those teams would lock horns in some of the most memorable and heated NFL games of this decade. And as they emerged as the best teams in football, Seattle and San Francisco redefined nearly every aspect of the modern NFL: from roster-building, to schematic approach, to how teams used their QBs.

As the Steelers-Ravens rivalry hit a relative low point in the early 2010s, with Pittsburgh slowly transitioning to the early years of its high-scoring Three-Bs era, the Seahawks and Niners filled the void. Their feud burned fast and bright, flaming out after an 8-8 finish in 2014 led the Niners to fire Jim Harbaugh. But after lying dormant for several years, it seems like both teams are finally ready to rekindle the flame. On Monday night, the 8-0 49ers host the 7-2 Seahawks in one of the biggest games of the season. The stakes between these teams are sky-high once again—and the NFL is better off for it.

It’s hard to believe that the most recent version of this rivalry lasted only a couple of years, because it gave us a decade’s worth of memorable moments. Plenty of those came when both teams shared the field, but each built their own mystique against other opponents, too. I was at Candlestick Park in January 2013 when Kaepernick racked up nearly 450 total yards and four touchdowns in a divisional-round win over the Packers. It was the most physically dominant performance I’d ever seen from a quarterback to that point—the Packers defense didn’t look like it belonged on the same field as Kaepernick.

With Kaepernick at the helm, the Niners built a reputation as a dynamic power-running squad with a hulking offensive line that could grind defenses into oblivion. And with Patrick Willis, Justin Smith, and NaVorro Bowman on the other side of the ball, San Francisco had a terrifying defense to match. Harbaugh was there to provide the comic relief with some of the most memorable sideline temper tantrums ever, and together they produced some incredibly thrilling performances. (We don’t talk about the 2012 divisional-round win over the Saints nearly enough.)

At the same time, the Seahawks emerged as the loudest (in more ways than one), coolest group in football. It had been years since an NFL team had cultivated as many personalities as the Seahawks did at the start of this decade. Sherman had no qualms about chirping in Tom Brady’s face after a win. Chancellor made a habit of erasing anyone who crossed his path. Lynch trucked countless helpless defenders on his way to becoming an icon. (...)

The aspect of that game that stuck out most, though, more than any individual play, was the sense that you were watching two teams that were playing a different sport than the rest of the NFL. The pure physicality and speed on display was unlike anything else in the league during that time. And in ways both big and small, the Seahawks and Niners became the teams of the era.

by Robert Mays, The Ringer |  Read more:

Image: Getty Images/Ringer illustration

[ed. Tonight. See also (from the links above): Bigger, Faster, Stronger, Louder: How the Seahawks Became the Coolest Team in the NFL (Grantland).]