Even Seahawks punter Michael Dickson is ‘chasing edges’ to Seahawks’ Super Bowl
These Seahawks are obviously skilled.
Pro Bowl quarterback Sam Darnold has gone 30-6 the last two NFL seasons. He’s the first quarterback in league history to win 14 or more regular-season games in consecutive years with two different teams.
All-Pro wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba led the NFL with 1,793 yards receiving.
Pro Bowl defenders DeMarcus Lawrence, Leonard Williams and Devon Witherspoon plus do-it-all rookie Nick Emmanwori and signal-calling middle linebacker Ernest Jones led the league’s best defense in allowing the fewest points.
Yet what has separated the Seahawks from the rest of the NFL postseason field this month, indeed the reason Seattle is in Super Bowl 60 against the New England Patriots next weekend in Santa Clara, California: These Seahawks are smart.
Off-the-charts-football-IQ smart.
You likely already know the intelligence and improvisation Lawrence had in changing his planned pass rush and dropping into pass coverage to take away Matthew Stafford’s intended pass and the Rams’ fourth-down play. If you don’t, please read up.
That play won Seattle the NFC championship with 5 minutes left in it last weekend. It got the Seahawks into their fourth Super Bowl in the franchise’s 50-year history, their first in 11 years.
So did the brains of...the punter? Michael Dickson was an All-Pro and Pro Bowl selection as a rookie in 2018. He was second-team All-Pro this season. He’s one of the multiple reasons the Seahawks’ special-teams units is truly special.
Seattle was second in the NFL this season in special-teams DVOA. Defense-adjusted Value Over Average is an advanced football metric that measures a team’s efficiency on every play against the league’s average for that play.
This Seahawks team led the league in overall DVOA with one of the highest scores in NFL history (41% over league average). Seattle and L.A. (40%) had overall DVOAs about twice as high as any other NFL team this season.
The Seahawks’ special teams, and Dickson, is a huge reason why.
Last Sunday night at Lumen Field, in the second quarter of that conference title game, Dickson was doing what he’s been doing at an elite level for eight years, since the Seahawks traded up to draft the Australian wonder from the University of Texas. He boomed another of his moon-shot punts. It soared high and far into the Seattle evening sky.
Los Angeles’ Xavier Smith is usually one of the league’s most sure-handed punt returners. Yet he had trouble with this one from Dickson. Smith allowed the punt to go off his hands to the turf.
Dareke Young is Seattle’s “gunner.” He was doing his job as the outside coverage guy: Be the first Seahawk on the scene to stop in front of the returner fielding Dickson’s punt.
But Young overran the returner. He sprinted around him to avoid contacting Smith and drawing a penalty for interfering with the returner catching the punt. He ran behind Smith, as if Young’s job was to down Dickson’s punt near the goal line.
Except Smith was fielding Dickson’s 53-yard punt at the 10-yard line, too far to down it near the goal line.
Had Young been directly in front of Smith as he was supposed to be, the Seahawks would have recovered the muff for a game-changing turnover. They would have added to their 10-6 lead. Huge opportunity, lost.
On Seattle’s sideline, special-teams coach Jay Harbaugh and his assistant Devin Fitzsimmons reminded Young he was too far from the goal line to down the ball and his job there is to stay in front of Smith.
“Dareke has played great football for us all year. I think in that moment he thought he was playing for the end line when really should have been in front of the guy,” head coach Mike Macdonald said.
“So just a quick fix: ‘Back to your role.’”
Dickson went up to Young after that play.
“Be ready,” Dickson told Young, about L.A.’s Smith. “He’s going to drop another one.”
Early in the next quarter, with the game still tight and Seattle leading 17-13, Dickson was punting again. Sensing Smith was having trouble with the trajectory of his punts, Dickson sent this one even higher.
“Got a 5.3 on that one,” Dickson proudly told The News Tribune this week.
That means 5.3 seconds of hang time. It was one of his higher punts this season. That’s an elite hang time, well above the NFL average of around 4.5 seconds.
The punt also soared 55 yards. Smith had all kinds of issues with this one. He turned around. He fell down. And, just as Dickson had promised Young, the Rams returner dropped that one, too.
This time, Young made the adjustment. The gunner was right there in front of Smith to recover his second misplay of Dickson’s even-higher punt.
On the next play, Sam Darnold threw to Jake Bobo for a 17-yard touchdown.
The Seahawks led 24-13, their first two-score edge in the NFC championship they ended up winning 31-27.
“He was looking at us running down there, took his eye off the ball,” Young said. “Dickson was kicking great punts all game, and it’s like he wasn’t comfortable catching them.
“I knew when I missed the first one, I knew that I would have an opportunity to make a play. And I did.”
All because Dickson noticed Smith was having issues earlier in the game, and punted higher.
Seahawks ‘chasing edges’
This is exactly what Macdonald means when he wants players, his entire team, “chasing edges.”
Such edges, such subtleties, players such as Dickson and Lawrence playing instinctively, off-script, are the difference between the Seahawks playing in the Super Bowl versus watching it on television while on vacation this coming week.
Dickson. Game-breaking, Pro Bowl punt and kickoff returner Rashid Shaheed.
Seattle’s top-ranked punt- and kickoff-coverage teams.
Place-kicker Jason Myers with his NFL-leading and career high 171 points on field goals and extra points, the third-most most scored in an NFL season.
They make Seattle’s some very special teams, indeed.
Harbaugh is the innovative coach of this chasing-edges unit. He said he didn’t tell Dickson to punt the ball higher to give L.A.’s returner more fits. That was all by the eighth-year punting wizard, on his own.
“Every punter has little things that they’ll do that they think might give them an advantage,” Harbaugh told the TNT after practice Friday. “Maybe something he wasn’t quite expecting to see. ...Just to try to change things up on people a little bit in terms of the way the ball’s flying and traveling, and the way they’re tracking it.
“You don’t want to go and say, ‘Hey, do this, Mike.’ He’s so experienced. He’s really polished. He knows his body. He knows the situation. He knows the wind and the different stadiums, really well.
“I will defer to what he feels best about.”
This story was originally published January 31, 2026 at 3:04 PM with the headline "Even Seahawks punter Michael Dickson is ‘chasing edges’ to Seahawks’ Super Bowl."
