Julian Love: Career, Stats, Super Bowl LX and the Rise of Seattle’s Best Safety

Julian Love – NFL Safety, Super Bowl Champion, and the Most Underrated Pick of 2019

The Short Version of a Long Rise

Julian Love intercepted Drake Maye in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LX with Seattle leading 19-7, returned it deep into Patriots territory, and watched his team kick a field goal to push it to 22-7. The Patriots never got closer. It was, as these things go, exactly the kind of play that seals a game without anyone calling it the play that sealed the game. Love had been doing that for years.

Born March 19, 1998, in Westchester, Illinois. Attended Nazareth Academy in La Grange Park. Fourth-round pick, 108th overall, New York Giants, 2019. Current team: Seattle Seahawks, under contract through 2027. Career stats as of 2025: 557 tackles, 13 interceptions, 46 pass deflections, 6 forced fumbles, 2.5 sacks, one Super Bowl ring.

That draft position is the thing that has always been slightly off about how Love gets discussed. Todd McShay had him as the third-best corner in the 2019 class. Mel Kiper ranked him fourth. He went 108th. Justin Tuck, former Giants defensive end and Notre Dame alum, said immediately after the pick: “I love that pick, I don’t understand how he dropped to the fourth round.” Tuck knew Love from watching Notre Dame games, and he called it a steal on the spot. He wasn’t wrong, though it took a few years to prove it.

La Grange Park to South Bend

Love grew up a Walter Payton fan. That’s not a biographical footnote – it comes back around later, and it matters for understanding who he is. He also grew up a Notre Dame fan, which made his recruitment there feel less like a decision and more like the obvious ending to a story he’d been telling himself since he was a kid.

At Nazareth Academy, he was a two-way player – 92 tackles on defense and 1,067 rushing yards and 18 touchdowns on offense his senior year. The Chicago Sun-Times named him its 2015 Football Player of the Year. He committed to Notre Dame over Boston College, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Northwestern. His high school coach, Tim Racki, had never had a player reach the NFL before Love, let alone the Super Bowl.

As a true freshman in South Bend in 2016, he started the final eight games and led all Fighting Irish freshmen in tackles. That’s not typical. Most first-year defensive backs don’t start at Notre Dame as freshmen. Love did, registered 45 tackles, and kept going.

His sophomore year was when things got genuinely strange. He recorded 20 pass breakups – that single season would have ranked ninth all-time in Notre Dame history on its own. The previous school record for pass breakups in a season was 13, set by Clarence Ellis in 1969. Love broke it by seven. He also led the team in interceptions with three, and returned two for touchdowns (59 yards at Michigan State, 69 yards against NC State). By the time he was done at Notre Dame after three seasons, he’d set the school record for career pass breakups at 44 – and he only played three years.

He declared early after his junior year in January 2019, skipping his senior season. Thorpe Award finalist. Consensus All-American. One of the most decorated defensive backs in Notre Dame history who didn’t spend four years there.

Four Years of Waiting in New York

The Giants drafted him as a corner and converted him to safety, which is part of why he fell in the draft and part of why his first few years in New York looked unremarkable from the outside. In 2019, he played 15 games but took only three defensive snaps in the team’s first ten. Almost everything was special teams.

He played in 14 games in 2020, 17 in 2021 – five starts, a career-high seven passes defensed that year, 56 tackles, the second-most special teams tackles on the entire team. He was the only player in the NFL that season with at least 50 tackles, 10 special teams tackles, and one interception. That’s a weird stat, and it’s the kind that shows up in a player profile when someone is trying to argue the player is contributing more than his role suggests.

Then in 2022, the Giants finally started him at free safety. Logan Ryan and Jabrill Peppers had departed, and Love got the job. He went out and posted 124 tackles, two interceptions, five pass breakups, and a sack across 16 games. That was his free agency audition, and Seattle was watching.

Signing With Seattle and What That Contract Was Actually Worth

Love signed a two-year, $12 million deal with the Seahawks in March 2023. $4.82 million signing bonus, $5.98 million guaranteed. At the time, the Seahawks already had Quandre Diggs and Jamal Adams locked in as starters, so the arrangement looked more like a depth signing than a featured acquisition.

He met Pete Carroll before signing and described it simply: “After I met coach Carroll and everybody in the building, it just felt comfortable.” That’s about as quotable as a contract decision gets, but it’s also worth noting that Carroll had a history of getting above-average production from defensive backs who weren’t considered top-of-market signings. Love fit that pattern almost exactly.

The Jamal Adams injury situation – Adams had been hurt repeatedly over the previous three seasons – meant Love got starter reps almost immediately. By the end of 2023, he wasn’t a depth signing anymore.

2023: Pro Bowl Season, the Eagles Game, and a Very Eventful Fourth Quarter

110 tackles. Four interceptions. 10 passes defensed. NFC Defensive Player of the Week in Week 15. First Pro Bowl selection.

The Week 15 Monday Night Football game against Philadelphia is the one people point to. Love intercepted Jalen Hurts twice in the fourth quarter – the second one came on a Hail Mary attempt with six seconds left, Hurts heaving it into the end zone, Love picking it off to seal a 20-17 Seattle win. He’d become a father shortly before that stretch. He told reporters afterward: “I saw the ball floating, and I must be living right.” That’s either a coincidence or a quote a screenwriter would cut for being too perfect.

His Pro Bowl selection was his first. He went into the offseason as one of the NFC’s more respected safeties, and Seattle responded by extending him before the 2024 season on a three-year deal worth up to $36 million, per NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport.

2024: The Year the Numbers Got Harder to Ignore

Under first-year head coach Mike Macdonald, Love was deployed primarily as a true free safety – center field coverage responsibilities rather than the hybrid box role he’d sometimes played before. The results: 109 tackles (79 solo), three interceptions, 12 pass defenses, two forced fumbles, and over 1,000 defensive snaps for the first time in his career.

Pro Football Focus graded him with an 89.5 run defense score for the season – second among all safeties in the NFL, behind only Detroit’s Brian Branch. He ranked in the top 11 at his position in both missed tackle rate and coverage, and tied for second on the team in forced fumbles. CBS Sports noted he’d now posted at least 100 tackles in three consecutive seasons, matching only Kevin Byard across the entire defensive back position in that span.

He did give up five touchdown passes in coverage in 2024, including two on what SI.com’s Seahawks grade card called “misplays.” That’s a real number. The overall picture still came out strongly positive – a player can give up five scores and still rank among the top coverage safeties in the league, which is one of those uncomfortable realities of the position – but it’s there.

At New England in Week 2, he blocked his first career field goal in the fourth quarter, keeping Seattle within three before the Seahawks tied the game and eventually won in overtime.

Super Bowl LX: February 2026, Levi’s Stadium

Seattle beat New England 29-13. Kenneth Walker III was the MVP – 161 total yards. Devon Witherspoon had a 45-yard scoop-and-score that functionally closed the game. But with 8:47 left in the fourth quarter, Maye dropped back, and Love read it perfectly.

He described reading Maye’s “hitch” – a tell in the young quarterback’s mechanics that indicated where the ball was going. “Early on, I feel like we just saw a certain style kinda component to it,” Love told NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero and Mike Garafolo days after the game. “As we got more confident as the game went on, we were starting to feel looser, and just were playing faster.” The pick led to a Jason Myers field goal, Myers’ fifth of the game, which broke a Super Bowl record.

The Seahawks’ mic’d-up footage of Love celebrating the interception went viral in the days following the game. His former Giants teammates noted online that he’d been one of New York’s best players for years before getting this platform. He was also the Seahawks’ nominee for the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award going into the game – the award named for the player he’d grown up idolizing as a Chicago kid.

His high school coach Racki, speaking to TheStatehouseFile.com before the Super Bowl, said he told Love he was more proud of the Walter Payton nomination than any other football award he’d received. That was the opinion of someone who had watched Love since he was 14 years old, which probably carries more weight than most assessments.

How Love Actually Plays

He came out of Notre Dame as a corner who was good enough at coverage to set school records, and that background translates directly into how he plays safety. His ability to match up against slot receivers – something pure box safeties often can’t do cleanly – is what made Macdonald willing to give him center-field responsibilities rather than keeping him as a run-support player near the line.

The nickname “Duct Tape” – used in Seaside Joe’s 2023 long-form profile on him – captures something real. He has played corner, nickel, free safety, and special teams at a high level across his career. He’s not a size freak. At 5-11, 195 pounds, he’s listed as slightly undersized for the position. What he has is football IQ and a low missed-tackle rate – RotoWire noted he ranks in the top 11 at safety for missed tackle percentage in 2024.

The 2025 season was shortened by hamstring and shoulder issues – he played eight games. That’s the one real question going into 2026: whether those were one-year interruptions or the beginning of a durability pattern. He’s 28. His contract runs through 2027. Seattle doesn’t appear worried.

Julian Love’s Career Statistics by Season

Here’s the full picture across his career:

*2025 tackle total estimated from available game-by-game data; full season cut short by injury.

Contract and Fantasy Value

Three years, up to $36 million, signed in summer 2024. He’s locked in through 2027, which takes him to age 29. The structure makes him one of Seattle’s foundational pieces on defense regardless of what happens at the other safety spot.

For IDP fantasy purposes, he’s been a reliable triple-digit tackler for three straight seasons – only the second defensive back to do that alongside Kevin Byard. His interception rate is strong enough to provide upside without being so dependent on turnovers that a quiet stretch tanks his value. The 2025 injury concern is real for dynasty formats; managers who rostered him took a real hit. But his role and organizational support are both intact.

What gets me about Love’s career arc is that the draft community essentially had him right – top-three corner in the class – and then watched him fall to pick 108 because teams couldn’t agree on what position he played. He went to a franchise that didn’t have a clear role for him, spent three years proving himself on special teams, finally got a starting job, immediately looked like a Pro Bowl player, and then had to leave to get paid and recognized. The Seahawks gave him that opportunity. He’s repaid it with a Super Bowl ring and one of the more quietly impressive four-season runs a safety has put together in this decade.

He earned his degree from Notre Dame while in the NFL, completing it after leaving campus early. He and his wife Julia have been together since high school. Their bernedoodle is named Leo.