Seahawks coach Aden Durde made history with Seattle's Super Bowl victory... but he's not falling into the 'dangerous' trap of dreaming of a repeat as champions kickstart NFL season

Aden Durde is talking Super Bowls, Sam Darnold and setting standards; he is talking about Jaxon Smith-Njigba's hands. He is happy to touch on any number of subjects, but he will not be drawn on whether the Seattle Seahawks have another Lombardi Trophy in them this season.

'It's a dangerous path to go down to think about repeating,' he says. 'You never know what's going to happen because there's a lot of uncontrollable outcomes that can happen week by week. Injuries, different things.'

Durde certainly knows better than most there's no point getting too far ahead of yourself. 'I'm just trying my best to be the best version of what I am,' he says.

What this the London-born defensive coordinator now is, thanks to the Seahawks' victory last season, is the first British coach to win the Super Bowl, only eight years after he left his homeland. His story has been told, but it is worth reminding ourselves that successful spells as an intern coach with the Falcons and Cowboys led to Atlanta making him assistant defensive coach in 2018.

Then came a job as the Dallas Cowboys' defensive line coach. His work there did not go unnoticed - not least because some of it was done in front of the Hard Knocks camera in the 2021 season, when from behind the self-deprecating facade emerged a man with a steely determination, coaching nous and personal touch to match. 

So it was little surprise that he was a man in demand in the 2024 offseason when he was approached by 'three or four other teams'. But then Seattle - home of the Legion of Boom - came a-calling.

'I came away from [the interview] and I really thought I connected with the people on that team,' he tells the Daily Mail. 'And I had very like-minded principles in the way they believe the game should be played, should be taught, the processes it should be created, the way you should connect as an organisation. 

'Those things shone out of them when they were talking. It really excited me. So once I got the opportunity, it was an absolute no-brainer.'

There is nothing that has happened since that will have made Durde regret the decision, especially the past 12 months as the Seahawks put the disappointment of 2024 behind them to produce a memorable 2025 season. But did he know it would be as good as it turned out? Did he know he had a team of future Super Bowl champions under his tutelage?

'[As a coach] you know what good football looks like, you know what constant improvement looks like, and you can see early on if your guys are doing that. And you felt early on that the guys were creating a way of life.

'They weren't just doing something, they were creating a process, a way of life of how you operate on a day-to-day basis. And that was a very special thing, and it just kept growing.'

And as the clock ticked down to 0:00 in Santa Clara, it reached its full glory. But rather than celebrate immediately, the Seahawks defensive coordinator was caught on camera returning to the bench for a quiet moment to himself.

'I just wanted to sit there and be able to take it in for that split second because I knew the next step that I took on the field was going to be kind of full on with everybody and the celebrations,' he says. 'I could see the fireworks and the confetti and I just wanted to take it in for a split second and just gather my thoughts.

'I've learned in life that you got to take these moments in, and you got to because they're fleeting, they come and go, and you can't stay in them forever. So you just take it in and live them, and get back to work the next day.'

But before a return to the day job, Durde threw his weight into his passion project. On a return to the UK this summer he fired the starting gun on a process that he hopes means he will not be the last English coach to get his hands on the Lombardi Trophy.

He was back in London to help launch the Coach of the Future programme – a development programme designed to create career pathways for young Londoners in flag football, while opening opportunities into tackle football too.

It is just the sort of structured pathway that was lacking when he was starting out.

'NFL Europe was a great step for coaches, and obviously I played in it, and I knew a lot of the coaches,' he said. 'A lot of those guys mentored me when I was becoming a young coach, and helped me kind of put together my thoughts, my philosophies, how I would want to do it, and taught me the organisational skills you need through it. And I think there's fewer of those people around now that can help the guys. So hopefully this avenue will create a space for people to talk about it.'

People are certainly talking about Durde - and his stock could rise further if the Seahawks become only the fourth team in three decades to go back-to-back. The teams to have done it were led by John Elway, Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes. There can't be many metrics for which Sam Darnold measures up against such a triumvirate, but Durde has no doubts about the man tasked with leading the Seahawks' tilt at history.

'I think Sam is a baller. Quarterback is an extremely difficult position to jump in early to, and I think he's found himself and he's found his groove, and he was doing it in Minnesota [in 2024]. You can see that he's confident and he does a great job.'

Darnold's resurgence speaks to a larger point about a league that always seems to be looking for its next stars before fully giving the previous generation a chance. So does Durde think the media, and the teams themselves, are too quick to write off young players if they fail to cut it after one or two years?

'Maybe at times. Players are young: there's different levels of development at different schools in them, like college football, so I think guys can develop at different times. I think you have to go through different experiences to find who you are as a player. There's a lot of player-coach marriage that helps a player develop, and when you find those right spots and those teams that they're on, you see players flourish.

It helps that Darnold has one of the league's brightest talents in the league to throw to in Jaxon Smith-Njigba.

'He's an excellent player that moves at an elite level,' Durde says. 'He's smooth. He's got excellent hands. He's as good with the ball in his hands as he is without it. I think he's constantly improving, and it makes us better practising against him.'

As for the men on his side of the ball he singles out the 2025 rookies Nick Emmanwori and Rylie Mills for praise, knowing that they are just the type of players who will need to set up if Seattle are to contend again. 

Tonight's opener, a repeat of February's Super Bowl, will give an early indication of where they stand. But Durde knows better than to get carried away with thoughts of a repeat.

'It's a week-by-week league, and if we really learned something last year, it is that every game is the most important game, and we deal with that week, and we deal with our improvement, and what we have to develop in that week, and I think that keeps you focused,' he says. 'I think it keeps you on task, and you don't get ahead of yourself or you don't get behind yourself.'