Super Bowl 2026: Aden Durde makes British NFL history as Sam Darnold completes comeback in tale of defiance

The gloomiest depths of New York told Sam Darnold he wasn't meant to be here. Donald Trump told Bad Bunny he wasn't meant to be here. Transatlantic logistics told Aden Durde he wasn't meant to be here. Preseason odds told the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks that neither were meant to be here.

And yet here they were, on the Super Bowl 60 stage, on which all were meant to be. A stage on which convention was clobbered, doubters defied, Britons buoyed up by homegrown heroics and a worthy champion crowned.

Seattle tormented New England quarterback Drake Maye with the nous and strangling intensity with which they have tormented most of the league this season. On Sunday they stormed to a 29-13 victory over the Patriots in what served as the fitting underline to a season built on defensive supremacy alongside Darnold's comeback tale.

Footballing schematics would tell Devon Witherspoon he wasn't meant to pressure the young New England quarterback so easily and so often, for some kind of restraining order may be issued. The Los Angeles Rams would tell Cooper Kupp he wasn't meant to be blunting coverages on the way to becoming a double Super Bowl champion. NFL history would tell Kenneth Walker III he wasn't meant to be Super Bowl MVP, as he became the first running back to win the accolade since Terrell Davis in Super Bowl XXXII following the 1997 season.

At the helm of football's most stubborn, scariest defense meanwhile lies both Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald and British defensive coordinator Durde, who little more than a decade ago was coaching the London Warriors as the soon-to-be-founder of the NFL's International Player Pathway programme.

Durde had ascended through the ranks inspired by Mike Ditka's Super Bowl-winning 1985 Chicago Bears, which included his current assistant head coach. Speaking of which, the Buffalo Bills told Leslie Frazier he wasn't meant to be coaching a Super Bowl team.