At 8:20 PM ET on Wednesday, we will be playing the Seattle Seahawks (452) minus the points versus the New England Patriots (451). THE SITUATION: Seattle (0-0) begins the defense of their Super Bowl title after their 29-13 victory against the Patriots last February to conclude their 17-3 campaign. New England (0-0) looks for revenge after finishing last season with a 17-4 record.
REASONS TO TAKE THE SEAHAWKS MINUS THE POINTS: To understand the 2025-26 Super Bowl champions is to understand how history will eventually evaluate that NFL season. I have my suspicions that hindsight will eventually lead to the conventional wisdom being that it was a down year in what was a season of transition regarding the powers of the contenders for the Super Bowl title. Kansas City and Baltimore failed to make the playoffs — and Buffalo squandered their golden opportunity to finally reach the Super Bowl in the Josh Allen era. On the NFC side, both Philadelphia and Detroit took steps backwards. San Francisco was ravaged by injuries. The Seahawks demolished them in the Divisional Round of the NFC playoffs by a 41-6 score. And then there stood the Los Angeles Rams. Admittedly, I was on the Rams in that game, but Seattle beat them by a 31-27 score to reach the Super Bowl. The Seahawks won two of their three meetings with Sean McVay and Matthew Stafford by a combined three points, with all three of those games decided by four points or less. Frankly, the winning difference between those two teams may have been Seattle’s outstanding special teams unit significantly outplaying a subpar Rams special teams. We were on the Seahawks in the Super Bowl against New England (our NFL Game of the Year) in a game we correctly identified as a mismatch. Looking back, Seattle and the LA Rams were the best two in the NFL last year — and probably the divide between them and the rest of the league was wider than we realized at the time. Using the DVOA metrics by the Football Outsiders (now at FTN), they rank the 2025-26 Seahawks as the fourth-best team of all time since 1977. The Mike Macdonald defense was spectacular last season, with “amoeba” players like Devon Witherspoon and Nick Emmanwori having the flexibility to thrive in pass coverage or move into the box to stop the run — and this allowed the Seattle defense to play in a 4-2-5 nickel formation as their base defense 93% of the time. Macdonald’s fundamental philosophy is to have his unit make formation adjustments post-snap. Having players who can operate effectively at multiple positions is essential. Now I don’t love that Emmanwori is listed as questionable to play tonight since he plays an important role in their run defense. His participation in practice has amped up this week — my best guess is that he plays but is limited. The Seahawks ranked third in the NFL last season by surrendering only 91.9 rushing Yards-Per-Game — and they gave up -155 fewer rushing yards than their expected Rushing Yards Allowed metrics, despite rarely playing a stacked box. With the confidence and validation from the Super Bowl triumph, quarterback Sam Darnold and this entire team should perform better this season. Darnold has now won 31 of his last 38 NFL starts — and his teams are 26-11-1 ATS in those 38 games. One of the reasons I felt strongly about fading New England in the Super Bowl last season were due to my considerable concerns about the Patriots' regular season schedule not being assuaged during their playoff run last season — and I thought Drake Maye was overrated, given his MVP considerations after watching him in three playoff games. New England was gifted a second-half blizzard against backup quarterback Jarrett Stidham, who had not played in two seasons before the AFC Championship Game. Not only did the Patriots enjoy the easiest regular season schedule this year, according to the DVOA metrics by the Football Outsiders (now at FTN), but their opponents represented the third-easiest slate of games in hindsight, going all the way to 1978. They set an NFL record by playing 14 opponents that ended the season with a losing record. Only Pittsburgh (in Week Two) and then their pair of games against Buffalo presented opponents that finished the season with a winning percentage over .500 — and the Steelers did not exactly sport the Greatest Show on Turf with their offense. Eleven of their 14 regular season victories came against quarterbacks who were either rookies, backups, or starters who eventually got benched: Quinn Ewers, Brady Cook, Justin Fields, Dillon Gabriel, Spencer Rattler, and Tyler Huntley. Their Red Zone defense ranked 31st in the NFL. Their Run Defense DVOA ranked fifth in the league through the first nine weeks — but that unit dropped to 18th in that metric since (before the AFC Championship Game blizzard). Let’s then contextualize the Patriots’ three playoff victories. The Los Angeles Chargers were the lowest-rated team of all the AFC squads that made the postseason — and the score was still 9-3 with ten minutes left in the fourth quarter before New England scored their final touchdown. It was a prehistoric rock fight before the Chargers’ injuries on the offensive line were simply too much for them to overcome. The Patriots were 0-for-5 in the Red Zone, which continued their mediocrity inside their opponent’s 20-yard line, where they ranked 15th in DVOA. New England only managed 248 total yards. Then, in their 28-16 victory against Houston, they only managed 248 total yards in a game where the Texans’ quarterback C.J. Stroud hit rock bottom with four interceptions. New England deserved some credit for disrupting Stroud — but those who watched the game also know their eye-test suggests he was a disaster. That leaves us with their victory against the Broncos, where they scored their only touchdown after Stidham’s amateur mistake of trying to force an incomplete pass instead of taking the sack, which resulted in a devastating turnover deep in their end. Denver head coach Sean Payton had previously passed up an easy field goal attempt to make the score 10-0. The Patriots secured a 23-yard field goal in the snow midway through the third quarter — and stopping a backup quarterback in a blizzard secured their place in the Super Bowl, despite them gaining only 206 yards. Taking the cumulative win percentage of New England’s opponents last season, there had been only two teams to win the Super Bowl with a lower number than their -4.49 mark. And then there was Maye, who was a fine second-year quarterback with an extremely bright future. But his MVP case was on the back of (a) getting to play a slew of losing teams and (b) the lack of compelling alternatives in this transition year in the league. He then added more evidence to my suspicion in New England’s first three playoff games that many of the folks who talk or write about the NFL do not bother to actually watch the games. Maye’s baseline numbers against the Chargers in the AFC Wildcard round looked solid — but his Success Rate in the passing game of 42% was the lowest since early November. He needs to send Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud birthday cards as a perpetual “thank you” since that nightmare performance offered him cover for his four fumbles and an interception in that game. That performance was telling since it was the first time all season he played against a top-eight defense using the Defensive DVOA metrics by the Football Outsiders (now at FTN). And then he encountered a Denver defense that ranked fifth in Defensive DVOA. Maye should probably thank Mother Nature, too, for the second-half blizzard giving him an excuse for his 10-of-21 performance with just 86 passing yards. Even if that was just first-half numbers rather than the full game, it would be underwhelming. Overall, in the postseason heading into the Super Bowl, Maye completed only 56% of his passes and averaged 6.9 Yards-Per-Attempt as compared to his 70% completion percentage and 8.0 YPA mark in the regular season. Perhaps most concerning, he was sacked five times in each of his first three playoff games. Blame playing great competition. Blame the weather. But this may simply be the case of the inevitable reappearance of the Regression Gods. Maye’s 31 touchdown passes and eight interceptions in the regular season need to be tempered by the deeper metrics that indicate he only had 27 “Big-Time Throws” and committed 17 Turnover-Worthy Plays. Rookie left tackle Will Campbell deserves some of the blame for the sacks after getting exposed in the postseason. Texans defensive end Will Anderson made him look silly against a pass rusher who can quickly convert speed to power. Of course, the Seahawks won the Super Bowl in a final score that fails to illuminate how much of a mismatch this game was. Seattle took a 19-0 lead in the fourth quarter and was later up 29-7 before the Patriots scored a late final touchdown. Maye’s frontline numbers look much better than how he performed for most of that game. He completed 27 of 43 passes for 295 yards, but most of that production was in the fourth quarter when the Seahawks coaching staff changed tactics with an eye to the ticking clock. Maye threw an interception to Seattle defensive back Julian Love, which was as bad a deep ball as one will see by an NFL quarterback (and left color commentator Chris Collinsworth almost speechless). He later threw a pick-six to Devon Witherspoon. Maye’s QBR for the game was a devastatingly low 16.3. He will learn from the experience and should become a better quarterback next season — but I don’t expect him to have suddenly figured out Cover-6 formations. Against Cover-6 pass coverage, Maye averaged 7.4 Yards-Per-Attempt, ranking 22 of the 48 qualifying NFL quarterbacks. He led the league against all other coverages by generating 9.3 YPA. Seattle led the NFL last season by using Cover-6 in 20% of their defensive plays — and they amped that up to 48% in the Super Bowl. Granted, the Patriots' wide receiver room should be even better this season — while they released Stefon Diggs, they traded for A.J. Brown from Philadelphia and signed Green Bay’s Romeo Doubs in free agency. And granted, Campbell was playing through an injury late in the season. But the concerns about his short arms at left tackle remain. He allowed 29 pressures in the playoffs (the most in the NFL since 2016) — and the whopping 14 pressures he surrendered in the Super Bowl were the most in a playoff game since 2018. Maye’s 21 sacks in the playoffs broke an NFL record. The running game was impacted as well, as the Patriots’ stuff rate on 22.9% of their rush attempts was the fourth-highest mark in the league — and TreVeyon Henderson is out tonight, leaving the bulk of the rushing responsibilities to Rhamondre Stevenson. New England did draft left tackle Caleb Lomu in the first round from Utah — and while the initial buzz was that he would move to right tackle, moving Campbell to guard remains an obvious option.
FINAL TAKE: The Seahawks covered the point spread in 13 of their 17 games when favored last season. They have also covered the point spread in 11 of their 16 games when listed in the +/- 3-point range since Macdonald became their head coach. I did a thorough deep dive on both these teams in the offseason — and I relooked at this game in the last 24 hours with fresh eyes. The Patriots should be better — but the gap they are attempting to make up with Seattle is significant. 10* NFL New England-Seattle NBC-TV Special with the Seattle Seahawks (452) minus the points versus the New England Patriots (451). Best of luck for us — Frank.
