Seahawks get another opportunity to beat 38-year-old MVP in a championship game

25->13 in more ways than one: Wait till you get to the end!

Can you imagine a number one ranked Seahawks defense going into a huge playoff game against the number one scoring offense featuring an MVP quarterback who led the league in passing yards and touchdowns, and most of the bets and expert picks going against Seattle? You don’t have to make up the details in your head because it already happened almost exactly 12 years ago.

On February 2, 2014, the Seahawks faced Peyton Manning the month before his 38th birthday, having led the league in passing yards (5,477) with a career-high for touchdown passes (55), as a first-team All-Pro, paired with a Broncos defense that allowed 5.3 yards per play and forced 26 turnovers.

On January 25, 2026, the Seahawks will face first-team All-Pro quarterback Matthew Stafford the month before he turns 38, coming off a season with a career-high 46 touchdown passes, a league-leading 4,707 yards, and paired with a Rams defense that has allowed 5.2 yards per play and forced 26 turnovers.

I’m not here to give you free tips to the L.A. Rams, but center Coleman Shelton might wanna be reeeeaaaallly careful with his opening snap.

The Seattle Seahawks will be just one week shy of the 12-year anniversary of Super Bowl XLVIII, the best game in franchise history, and this time they’ll be at home. Gamblers bet a record (at the time) $119 million on the game, mostly fans around the globe backing Manning.

I doubt Stafford is as popular and certainly the Rams offense isn’t as potent or legendary as Denver’s (despite leading the league, L.A.’s 30.5 average still trails the 2013 Broncos by over 7 points per game) but fans love offense. No matter how often that adoration gets them in trouble.

So despite Seattle’s 35-point win on Saturday compared to the Rams barely getting by a mediocre team for the second week in a row, the Seahawks only opened as 2.5-point favorites at home.

While momentum should be on Seattle’s side, I think that betting line foreshadows history repeating itself from 2013 again in terms of experts who pick Stafford because they won’t look beyond the question: “Who do I like more between the starting quarterbacks?”

Prepare for another week of Sam Darnold being far more important to the pre-game narratives than the actual game itself.

And look, sometimes that is what decides a football game, right? If Caleb Williams doesn’t throw three interceptions (or Rome Odunze doesn’t drop 3+ passes), he’s going to Seattle this week instead of Stafford. But the 2025 Seahawks don’t really play “pass the ball” ball and guess what other playoff team didn’t do that either:

The 2013 Seahawks.

The Seahawks ranked 31st in pass attempts in 2013 and they rank 29th in pass attempts this season with Darnold averaging two more attempts per game than Russell Wilson did that season. Wilson didn’t throw more than 25 pass attempts in any playoff game that year, while Stafford has already thrown 42 pass attempts in each of L.A.’s postseason games.

And he’s only completed 44 of those 84 passes (52.3%). Peyton Manning would never.

Well, almost never. Manning only completed 55% of his attempts during the 2015 postseason and the Broncos did win the Super Bowl, but only after he was benched for Brock Osweiler late in the year and right before he knew he had to retire. Are we sure that Seattle is facing the “MVP” version of the MVP? Manning’s fall-off was sudden. He nearly won another MVP in 2014 until a late-season slide and he never recovered.

Who is this Stafford?

Over his last five games, Stafford is only completing 56.8% of his pass attempts and Sunday’s win over the Bears was the first time all season that he failed to throw a touchdown pass (Stafford has not completed 60% of his passes in any of his 4 starts against Mike Macdonald’s defense). That could be weather related, but Caleb Williams managed two touchdowns and he wasn’t facing Chicago’s defense, which allowed the fifth-most passing touchdowns in the NFL.

Maybe it’s injury related. Maybe it’s the obvious deterioration of 33-year-old Davante Adams. Maybe teams are just solely focused on taking Puka Nacua out of the equation, something Seattle couldn’t do the last time (225 yards, 2 TDs) and it nearly killed them.

Whatever the reason, the Los Angeles Rams may be going into this game as the number one offense over the course of the 2025 season but they are also coming out of their last game with more questions about Stafford than anyone should have about Darnold. Because the Broncos once found out what it was like to live or die by your quarterback going against a number one-ranked Seahawks defense.

Then there’s the matter of special teams

It wasn’t until today that I found out that the 2013 Denver Broncos ranked 32nd in yards per kickoff return allowed (29.3, which was way worse than any other team), but it makes perfect sense because of what Percy Harvin would do to them at the start of the second half.

Harvin wasn’t the first to return a kickoff for a touchdown against Denver that year, as Kansas City’s Knile Davis did it two months earlier.

It’s difficult to get great special teams measurements from 2013, but PFF grades and DVOA both had the Broncos around 10th-15th that season and getting worse as the playoffs approached. Most of that was probably Trindon Holliday, who had a kickoff and a punt return touchdown (the only player to do that in 2025 was Shaheed), and Matt Prater only missing one kick or PAT all season.

But coverage seemed to be an Achilles heel and it came back to bite them in the Super Bowl against a player who may have been an All-Pro returner in 2013 if not for the fact that Harvin only played in one regular season game—and he had a 58-yard kickoff return in it.

Did somebody say “Rashid Shaheed against the Rams special teams”?

Who do you predict will score the first touchdown?

By DVOA:

• Special Teams total: Seahawks 2nd, Rams 26th

• Kickoffs: Seahawks 1st, Rams 4th

• Kick Returns: Seahawks 6th, Rams 16th

• FG/XP: Seahawks 10th, Rams 30th

• Punts: Seahawks 15th, Rams 28th

• Punt Returns: Seahawks 2nd, Rams 21st

• Hidden Points: Seahawks 5th, Rams 23rd

These totals don’t even include Shaheed’s kickoff return touchdown on Saturday.

In just 10 total games with Seattle, Shaheed has returned three kicks for touchdowns. The Rams have allowed one return touchdown this season, that being by Shaheed in L.A.’s worst special teams EPA game of the season during Seattle’s Week 16 win.

For a franchise that has consistently downplayed the importance of special teams in the last 5-6 years (firing a good coach in John Fassel, going cheaper on all their special teams roles), you have to wonder if the Rams are more worried about getting “Harvin’d” than they are about the 20-25 passes Darnold might throw.

-Just like the 25 passes that Wilson threw in the Super Bowl, all with the lead.

-Just like the 17 passes that Darnold threw on Saturday, all with the lead.

The Rams already fired their special teams coordinator this season and the interim replacement was fired by Sean Payton a year ago for mistakes that led to a Broncos playoff loss.

Though the focus going into Super Bowl XLVIII was heavily centered on “Can Wilson keep up with Manning?” and “Do the Seahawks have pedestrian WRs?”, the story at the end was Seattle’s defense causing chaos with three turnovers (the only time the Broncos offense had a negative EPA the entire year was the Super Bowl and it was worse than Seattle’s worst game in 2013) and special teams.

Wilson’s first touchdown came with a 29-point lead. Denver’s top-2 receivers had 118 and 84 yards, significantly more than Doug Baldwin and Golden Tate and Jermaine Kearse.

If Sunday’s game at Lumen Field goes as the Seahawks plan it to go, the gameplan should be very similar to 12 years ago.

This newsletter was FATE

It was not until I got to the end of this post that I realized that today is the 2,513th consecutive day that Seaside Joe has sent out a newsletter about the Seattle Seahawks.

Did you catch it?

2513.

‘25.

‘13.

This game isn’t the Super Bowl, but in many ways…it is.

Seaside Joe 2513