The Seahawks/Broncos rivalry: a personal retrospective

Until the Seattle Seahawks moved to the NFC in 2002, the team had a long-standing rivalry with the Denver Broncos. On Sunday, the rivalry will be renewed at Invesco Field in Denver.

Beginning with the 1977 NFL season, the Seahawks and Broncos were heated divisional rivals (the Seahawks spent their inaugural NFL season as an NFC team while their expansion cousin, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, played in the AFC), and every game was played with a great deal of intensity.

There's a lot of games and moments in this rivalry that stick out the most. Josh Brown beating the Broncos in Denver in 2006 (on my 22nd birthday of all days!) with a game-winning field goal is one memorable moment. Or a 1999 regular season game at the Kingdome where the Broncos tried to hurry to snap the ball near the end of the game only for time to expire on them with the crowd counting down the final seconds. But the most intense season of the rivalry came in 1988. Denver had just come off their second straight AFC Championship (only to be humiliated in the Super Bowl for the second straight year, where they gave up 35 Washington Redskins points in the second quarter), and the Seahawks had come off a Wild Card-round playoff loss to the Houston Oilers.

During the 1988 opener at Mile High Stadium, Broncos safety Mike Harden delivered what turned out to be an illegal hit on Seahawks all-pro receiver Steve Largent. The hit was so hard it knocked two of Largent's teeth out, and after the hit was made Harden gave out some sort of taunt. As a result Harden was fined by the NFL for the hit. Now turn the clock ahead to December 11, 1988 at the Kingdome in Seattle. The two teams met again in front of a national cable TV audience on ESPN. It was a game where the Seahawks dominated, blowing out the Broncos 42-14. But it was fairly evident that Largent had this day circled on his calendar, as evidenced by this video clip.


The events of that night show that the intensity of the rivalry will always be there, despite the two teams playing in separate conferences and divisions. The teams only meet once every four years (the next meeting between the two is expected to take place in 2014). To those fans that think Seahawks/Broncos isn't a rivalry, I've got news for you: go watch the clip from above and tell me if it's a rivalry or not...it was one of the best in the NFL and it's a shame that it's not renewed as much as it once was.

In regards to the postseason, the teams met only once. The 1983 AFC Wild Card game in Seattle was their lone postseason meeting. It was the first playoff game in franchise history for the Seahawks, and the first playoff game since 1979 for the Broncos. The teams were tied at 7-7 after one quarter of play, but the Seahawks pulled away in the final three quarters to a 31-7 victory. Even though the Broncos had the edge in total offense, it was mistakes that led to their booking of early tee times. And in 2005, there was the possibility the two teams would meet in Detroit for Super Bowl XL. Seattle made it to Super Sunday in beating the Carolina Panthers handily at Qwest Field, but the Broncos never stood a chance against the very determined (and destined) Pittsburgh Steelers (who would eventually win Super Bowl XL). But the possibility of a Seahawks/Broncos Super Bowl in the future is always a possibility.