Rare Hawks: Why Ty Okada & Jake Bobo embody the Seattle Seahawks

One knocked a player out cold. The other had defenders twitching with rage as a rookie. Want to know why the Seahawks are in Super Bowl LX? We chat with their two most likely players.

Feb 08, 2026

SAN FRANCISCO — He threw an interception and he was pissed. Ty Okada needed to make this defender pay on the sideline.

A high school quarterback at East Ridge (Minn.) High School, Okada changed a fade route to fade-stop but his receiver must not have received the signal. The QB’s pass sailed directly into the hands of a defensive back for Woodbury, their chief rival. Immediately, Okada viewed that defender as prey.

One thought dominated his mind: I’m going to light this dude up.

He relished physicality. He had been a wrestler his entire life. With full force, Okada blasted his left shoulder through the Woodbury player.

Momentum helped the DB pop of for a split-second and then he collapsed back to the turf on East Ridge’s sideline. His eyes were closed. He stopped moving. Trainers needed to reach into the player’s mouth and pull out his tongue because he was choking on it.

“I knocked him out cold,” Okada says. “It was actually pretty scary.”

Soon enough, the player eventually woke up. Okada heard teammates gave him grief the rest of the year.

When it was time to sell his own football skills to prospective colleges, Okada put this interception onto his Hudl highlight reel. After all, quarterback wasn’t in his future. He was trying to get looks on defense. Maybe a school would be impressed by this collision. Maybe a coach out there would then like to hear about his background as an all-state wrestler in the state of Minnesota. Okada wanted to make one fact clear to schools: “I can hit and I’m not afraid to do it.”

Montana State invited him as a walk-on. He made the team.

The Seattle Seahawks invited him to camp as an undrafted free agent. He made the team again.

He’d love for those members of the “Legion of Boom” to see the play that made his existence in Super Bowl LX possible.

“Hopefully it would make ‘em proud.”

Both Seattle (60-to-1) and New England (80-to-1) started this season as long shots to win the Super Bowl. This is the first matchup since 1977 (the earliest preseason title odds existed, per Sports Odd History) that both teams had 60/1 odds or higher. Before today, the record was the 1981 game between San Francisco (50/1) and Cincinnati (60/1).

The only way a team pulls off the impossible is with impossible players.

For the Seahawks, look no further than the safety Okada and his good friend on the other side of the ball: wide receiver Jake Bobo. Both faced much steeper odds to even play pro football and became integral pieces on a championship roster. We always see guys buried on the depth chart put on the Superman cape in the Super Bowl. The last time these two teams met on this stage, each team had such a player: Jermaine Kearse (Seattle) and Malcom Butler (New England). Side note: My favorite scene here in San Francisco all week was Butler sipping a coffee at the hotel bar watching that 2014 Super Bowl on a TV above.

Bobo and Okada are ready if their own opportunity knocks.

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“More Bobo!”

Chad Morton, Seattle’s running backs coach in 2023, loved taunting the defense with those two words throughout OTA practices. Words that echoed. Bobo was a random Caucasian wide receiver destined to bounce around practice squads a couple years before finding a new profession. But he made play… after play… after play in practice.

“It started as less a compliment to me and more of a dig at the defense,” Bobo says. “Like, ‘You’re going to let the skinny white boy run around on you guys, dude?’ Chad is a very loud individual. I love him to death. Thankful for even coming up with that. But it was more of a shot at the defense than it was a compliment.”

Seattle’s veterans on defense got sick of being embarrassed. Bobo started to dread those calls for “More Bobo!” because they put a target on his back. (“I’m like, ‘Chad, you’re killing me! These guys are coming from my head now!’”) Into training camp, linebackers and defensive backs started to get their licks in. They’d aggressively punch at the ball after each catch. Bobo forced coaches to notice him and carved out a role as reserve wideout and core special teams player. In his team’s NFC Championship win over the Los Angeles Rams, he caught a 17-yard touchdown the first play after L.A. muffed a punt.

The route is straight out of a receiving textbook. Bobo cooks Cobie Durant on the post-corner.

If the New England Patriots do choose to prioritize Jaxon Smith-Njigba and others, he may get another 1-on-1 target in the red zone at Levi’s Stadium. The key to lasting in the NFL? “Self-awareness.” Bobo knows he is not fast. One point during our conversation, he points toward Rashid Shaheed and jokes that No. 22’s raw speed pisses him off. Shaheed hit 21.72 mph on an 87-yard touchdown this season, the third-fastest time for a wide receiver this season. Bobo will never burn cornerbacks with acceleration, but he can win with deceleration.

The 6-foot-4, 207-pounder out of UCLA has learned how to manipulate defenders with change of direction and stopping faster than his peers.

“How fast can you go from full speed to zero miles an hour?” Bobo says. “Repetition. Being able to contort your body. For me, being a taller guy, how quickly can I get my shoulders low to the guard and then be able to re-accelerate back out of that cut has been something that I’ve been able to do. It’s also easy for me to do because at my top speed I’m not moving that fast.”

Okada and Bobo have a ton in common beyond being a couple of rare “white guys” at their positions. Both are engaged to be married. Both love golf, but admit they’re terrible at the sport. Both are pinching themselves that they’re in the Super Bowl considering how their football lives began. Neither fantasized about being the NFL.

Bobo grew up in North Andover, Mass. — Patriots Country — on a boarding school campus. His mother was a teacher. His father worked in sales. He had free range over the whole campus. Football, basketball, hockey, lacrosse, Bobo played every sport possible. Exposure he now sees helped him grow into an all-around athlete.

When Bobo realized he couldn’t throw a football longer than 35 yards into high school, he switched from quarterback to receiver. There are strong genes, too. Bobo’s father, Mike, played college football at Dartmouth as a wide receiver and won an Ivy League title. His grandfather, Keith, played QB at SMU and was a 12^th round selection by the Dallas Cowboys in 1974.

“Once I moved to receiver full-time in high school, I fell in love with it,” Bobo says. “I fell in love with catching the ball and making plays and probably was a little more flashy in high school than my father would’ve liked.”

Bobo’s dream was simply to play college football. This NFL stuff? “Icing on the cake.”

Meanwhile, Okada’s roots are in a different sport. He started wrestling in second grade and became one of the top grapplers in the state of Minnesota. He owns several high school state titles.

The mano-a-mano nature of the sport appealed to him.

“Wrestlers in general,” Okada says, “I have the utmost respect for, because it’s a lot of hard work and dedication and it’s a sport that’s not necessarily going to love you back. You have to be so dedicated to this process and it’s just you out there. The mentality and approach you must have in that sport is second to none. I carry that work ethic that I learned from wrestling with me in life.”

In other sports, you can rely on a teammate in a jam. Or there’s some form of trickeration, deception.

Okada finds wrestling “beautiful” because you can flat-out outwork an opponent.

“Who wants it more?” he asks.

Off to Montana State, going full “Rudy” as a walk-on, he immediately saw parallels between the two sports. At first, Okada played cornerback. Looking back, he sees how much this helped his footwork today in the pros. He redshirted. He earned a role on special teams. He clawed his way to a starting spot through six long years at Montana State. In ’22, his 72 tackles (six TFL), interception and nine pass breakups were enough to crack the Seahawks’ 90-man roster. Like Bobo, he did enough to eventually make the 53.

It’s taken Okada longer to see the field. When injuries struck this season, he was ready.

The 5-foot-11, 193-pound safety started 11 games for the Seahawks this season with 65 tackles (three for loss), one pick and one fumble recovery. That third-and-17 interception in Washington was a gem, too. Okada leaps high for Jayden Daniels’ desperation heave and taps both feet down on the sideline.

He took a yeomen’s approach to those early practices as a nobody at Montana State and Seattle, and it paid off.

“Hey, they didn't build Rome in a day,” Okada says. “You're not going to be able to make the roster just like on Day 1 by coming out and making a play.’ It's going to be my habits built up over time, being consistent, diving into the playbook, asking coaches questions, being methodical in how I approach each and every single day.
“Tom Brady talked about this a lot during his time in Michigan,” Okada says. “He was like, ‘Hey, you might only have one rep at practice, and then that one rep might turn into two. But it’s not going to turn into two unless you do the absolute best with that one rep.’ I’m just going to work while I wait. All I’ve ever needed was an opportunity.”

Okada enjoys ice fishing in his home state and spending time with friends, but that’s about it.

Bobo plays a little pickle ball with his fiancé. He enjoyed Yellowstone and is thinking about getting into a new show, but no. Bobo does not have any hobbies. He calls football his “hobby.” Nobody sees what athletes are up to when cameras aren’t around, he adds. Bobo prides himself on the hours of sweat this profession demands.

“This game consumes your life,” Bobo says. “It’s how it works.”

After the Super Bowl, his plan is to take the first flight to Sarasota, Fla., where he’ll relax for three days and then start training for next season at IMG Academy.

Okada isn’t going to waste any time before working out, either.

First, there’s one more football game to play.

Heads on a swivel, New England.

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