Seahawks Raise Eyebrows Online with Postgame Social Media Flap After Win Over Jaguars

The Seattle Seahawks scored a hard-fought 20-12 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday, marking their fourth win of the season. But while the defense clamped down and the scoreboard favored Seattle on the field, it was what happened off the field that stirred up an online firestorm.

The team took to X (formerly Twitter) shortly after the win to celebrate – nothing unusual there. But when the Seahawks clapped back at a pregame Jaguars meme with a video of a bird of prey swooping in on a cat, the internet had opinions. A lot of them.

To backtrack a bit: before Sunday’s kickoff, the Jaguars posted an image depicting jaguar claws tearing into a winged animal, clearly alluding to the Seahawks. That’s par for the course in the NFL’s ever-growing world of meme-warfare – social teams have leaned into playful trash talk in recent seasons.

Seattle responded after the game with a clip showing what looked like a cat getting snatched by a raptor on a set of stairs – the implication being: “You came for the bird, but the bird got you.” While it appears the video was AI-generated and not real footage, the reaction online didn’t exactly come with a round of applause.

Fans quickly flooded the replies, condemning the team’s choice. Some called it “unsportsmanlike,” while others zeroed in on the fact that the bird in the video wasn’t even a seahawk, noting – accurately – that the term “seahawk” isn’t an official species, and the bird in the clip resembled an eagle.

But ornithology wasn’t the main concern. Many users were simply disturbed by the imagery, even if it was artificial.

Comments ranged from “You guys really thought this was the one to post?” to “Why would you even post this, whether it’s real or not – it’s disturbing.”

One user joked that the team’s next big announcement might be an available job posting for a new social media manager. The general vibe: this wasn’t it.

And while the team probably meant it as a spirited troll in response to the Jags’ earlier jab – which, to be fair, also showed one animal attacking another – the line between creative trash talk and questionable taste is razor thin. Especially when it comes to content that even resembles harm to animals, fictional or not.

Now to be clear, this wasn’t a team celebrating an actual event involving a bird and a cat – it was a stylized shot at an opponent. But in today’s landscape where social teams walk the fine line between edgy and inappropriate on a daily basis, this one hit a nerve for a portion of the fanbase.

There are no reports of an official apology (yet), but the Seahawks’ social team might be reevaluating how far they’re willing to go in the digital back-and-forth. This one may have been a rare L following a W – on the timeline, if not the field.

At the end of the day, what mattered most to the team was that win column. But in the evolving world of sports and social media, it’s not just about the scoreboard anymore – it’s about the story that gets told after the whistle blows. And this one definitely got people talking.