SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The confetti has barely been swept from the Levi’s Stadium turf, and the Lombardi Trophy is safely back in the Pacific Northwest. But while the Seattle Seahawks are busy sizing their second championship rings after a suffocating 29-13 victory over the New England Patriots, one question hovered over the post-game hangover: would the NFL’s “No Fun League” hammer drop on the game’s feistiest moment?
So far, silence. And for cornerback Josh Jobe, silence is golden.
The league office, usually quick to issue FedEx envelopes with five-figure fines by Saturday, has seemingly ghosted the incident. As of Sunday morning, neither Jobe nor Patriots wideout Stefon Diggs has been docked a dime for their third-quarter wrestling match. In a season defined by strict enforcement, this non-call is the cherry on top of Seattle’s championship sundae.
The Punch That Vanished
If you blinked, you might have missed the spark that nearly ignited a brawl in the third quarter. With the Patriots desperate for momentum and trailing big, Drake Maye scrambled from the New England 35. The play was routine. The aftermath was not.
NBC Sports’ Mike Florio didn’t mince words in his breakdown. Jobe, the undrafted grinder who became a staple of Mike Macdonald’s “Dark Side” defense, leveled Diggs well after the play drifted out of bounds. Diggs didn’t take kindly to the late hit. He reached for a facemask. Jobe responded with a two-piece combo—one open-hand shove, one closed-fist punch to the helmet.
Refs? Nothing. No yellow cloth. No ejections.
“Both players undoubtedly will be fined,” Florio predicted on February 8. “Jobe could end up with more than one.”
Yet, here we are. Saturday came and went without the usual “fines report” dump from NFL headquarters. It mirrors last year’s Super Bowl, where the league also kept its wallet closed despite heated exchanges. Perhaps the magnitude of the moment—Super Bowl LX—gave the officials tunnel vision, or maybe the league just didn’t want to mar the Seahawks’ defensive masterpiece with petty paperwork.
Defense Wins Championships (Again)
Let’s not let the skirmish overshadow the absolute clinic Seattle put on. Twenty years after their heartbreak against the Steelers in Detroit, the Seahawks exorcised those demons with a performance that felt like 2013 all over again.
Drake Maye, the Patriots’ young gunslinger who looked unstoppable in the AFC Championship, ran into a wall. Seattle’s front seven harassed him all night, holding the Pats to a measly 13 points. Offensively, Kenneth Walker III ran like a man possessed, slicing through New England to claim MVP honors.
The scoreboard read 29-13, but the physical toll was higher. Diggs, who signed a massive three-year, $63.5 million deal to chase a ring in Foxborough, was left watching the celebration in tears. For Jobe, a player who fought his way from the practice squad to the starting lineup, the skirmish was just another day at the office—ugly, physical, and ultimately, victorious.
“We don’t back down. You want to talk, we talk. You want to hit, we hit harder. That’s Seahawks football. We got the hardware to prove it.”
— Josh Jobe, Seahawks Cornerback (Post-Game)
The Dynasty Reload?
This wasn’t a fluke. The Seahawks are young, hungry, and now, validated. With the 2026-27 season prep already starting, the rest of the NFC West is officially on notice. The “Legion of Boom” era is history; the Mike Macdonald era is right now.
As for Jobe? He heads into the offseason a champion, and unless the NFL decides to pull a late surprise on Monday, a little bit richer than expected. The money he didn’t lose to a fine can go toward the party tab.
