Reusse: Trent Kirchner, Klint Kubiak bring southwest Minnesota ties to Super Bowl

There is a strong likelihood that this Super Bowl would have featured the Seattle Seahawks against the Denver Broncos, if not for the fact the Broncos lost quarterback Bo Nix at the end of their 33-30 overtime win over Buffalo in the divisional round.

Backup Jarrett Stidham’s performance in the AFC title game peaked during the Broncos’ second possession. He was inept for the remaining 3½ quarters, and New England survived the second-half snow for a 10-7 win.

A Denver victory certainly would have made once-great quarterback Russell Wilson an even hotter topic next week in the run-up to the Super Bowl on Feb. 8 in Santa Clara, Calif.

The angles would have been that trading Wilson in March 2022 put the Seahawks back on the road to being an NFC powerhouse, and that Denver’s Sean Payton had done the greatest coaching/management task in pro football history by quickly digging the Broncos out from the debris of that trade.

How many of those five draft choices from the Wilson trade have contributed to the Seahawks’ return to the Super Bowl after an absence of a decade?

That question was directed to Trent Kirchner, the Seahawks vice president of player personnel, on Monday, Jan. 26. Kirchner was headed home from the office for a quick sleep before a crack-of-dawn flight of 2,100 miles to Mobile, Ala., with the team’s delegation for the Senior Bowl.

“We would have to say most of them helped considerably,” said Kirchner, who graduated from St. John’s in 2000. “Some of those draft choices led to other draft choices, or other players. When we look at the field, we see a number of difference-makers who wouldn’t be here without the trade.”

Q: Was your football boss, John Schneider, the genius who realized it was time to trade Wilson?

“Russell had said he wanted a trade, so that was primarily how it started,” Kirchner said.

There are different narratives being offered from the Wilson camp, as you might expect. Payton benched Wilson with two games left in the 2023 season, then released the QB in March 2024 — while taking a record $85 million dead-cap hit.

Wilson was with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2024 and the New York Giants in 2025, with no hint of his former greatness. He did send out a congratulatory message on social media to the Seahawks and quarterback Sam Darnold on reaching the Super Bowl.

“Happy to hear that,” Kirchner said.

Carroll landed with Las Vegas in 2025, Smith was traded there for a third-rounder, and now Pete has been fired (one and done). Meanwhile, the Seahawks are headed to the Super Bowl with Darnold, a quarterback whom Vikings fans turned on after he was sacked often by the L.A. Rams in a playoff game in January 2025.

“I wouldn’t say it was a case of wanting to move on from Geno; he wanted a different situation,” Kirchner said. “Obviously, we then needed a quarterback, and Sam … being available after the season he had in Minnesota, and only 28, [Schneider] was able to sign him."

Another asset the Seahawks had to sell to Darnold beyond a job and a three-year contract for $100.5 million was new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak.

“Sam and Klint were together in San Francisco in 2023,” Kirchner said. “They already had a strong relationship. Each and every day, you would see them working together.”

Kubiak was an extra-young Vikings coach for Mike Zimmer from 2019 to 2021. Klint then had stops in Denver, San Francisco and New Orleans before landing with Macdonald, Darnold and the Seahawks this season.

It also would be a loss personally to Kirchner because of this wondrous connection to Kubiak:

Kirchner comes from Fulda, Minn., the burg of 1,100 (always) in Murray County in southwest Minnesota. Also my hometown — although the Kirchners worked farms and outnumbered the Reusses substantially.

And thus this drama when Trent was in his first staff meeting with Kubiak, and Klint mentioned that his wife was from a small town in Minnesota.

“Where?” Kirchner asked.

“Balaton,” Kubiak said.

This was followed by conversation about both making visits to Lake Shetek, that area’s greatest gift to watery paradise.

“Klint met his wife at Colorado State,” Kirchner said. “Tessa. She was an outstanding volleyball player.”

OK, many Minnesotans can go with Darnold and memories of the 2024 Vikings season (14-3, 0-1) as the local angle for this Super Bowl.

Not the case for us former residents of the southwestern one-sixth of the state.