Seahawks don't skip leg day

It's the advantage Seattle has over the Rams that nobody is talking about

If special teams was treated the same as offense, then comparing the Seahawks to the Rams would be the same as comparing the Rams offense to the Saints offense.

If special teams was treated the same as defense, the comparison would be the Seahawks defense to the Raiders defense.

That’s how significant the drop-off is from what the Seahawks have accomplished on special teams this year compared to the Rams: Seattle is first in expected points added by special teams (+55.2) and L.A. is 26th (-20.5).

I’ve seen every Rams game. 26th is generous.

I’ve seen every Seahawks game. First might be an understatement.

In a game featuring the top two receivers in the NFL, the best defensive line against arguably the best offensive line, Matthew Stafford, Sam Darnold, and two of the best coordinators in the league facing off against one another (not to mention that Macdonald and McVay’s other coordinators are the top HC candidates), the matchup that nobody is talking about yet could also be what decides the outcome:

The Seahawks nearly beat the Rams on a long field goal try in Week 11. Jason Myers just made a long field goal at home to beat the Colts. Any close game likely comes down to the 3 or 4 or sometimes 7+ points created by special teams.

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Seahawks OWN Rams in special teams success

In Week 11, Seattle had a special teams EPA of +3.04, their fourth-best such performance of the season. Compare that to L.A.’s actual BEST special teams game of the season: +3.09.

The Seahawks have had three dominant EPA games on special teams:

Those three games were Saints, Jaguars, and 49ers.

Those are all of the Seahawks games with a positive EPA (if “EPA” is confusing, let’s just say that over 0.00 is generally “acceptable” to “very good” and negative is less than ideal) of which there are nine. Here are the Rams six best games on special teams:

L.A.’s fourth-best game of the season would rank as Seattle’s second-worst.

Yeah, I need to repeat that: The Seahawks second-WORST special teams of the season would be the Rams’ fourth-BEST special teams game.

L.A. has been worse than -2.00 on special teams 11 times this year, compared to just one such game for Seattle. The worst Seahawks special teams game (-6.60 against the Cardinals on a Thursday on the road) would only be the Rams’ fourth worst game.

A simpler way to put this would be that the Seahawks are a consistently good special teams team and the Rams are a consistently bad one. It’s been so predictable for both teams that anything other than a Seattle advantage on special teams on Thursday would be a huge surprise, it’s just a matter of how much of an advantage Jay Harbaugh manages to get over Chase Blackburn, the special teams coordinator for the Rams.

Do the Seahawks block a field goal? Return a kick for a touchdown? Force a fumble on a return?

Every potential outcome is on the table because the teams have been polar opposites on special teams this season. Will it be enough to make a difference in the final score if one team is more dominant than the other on offense?

How did the Seahawks get here?

Under the guidance of Harbaugh, Seattle has skyrocketed to the top of the league in special teams since the end of the Larry Izzo era and overcome last year’s struggles on kick returns. These are just a few of the standouts:

• Jason Myers was the special teams player of the month in November, then the special teams player of the week after making a franchise-record six field goals on Sunday

• Myers could end up breaking the record for most made field goals in a season

• The week before, Nick Emmanwori sparked Seattle by blocking a Falcons field goal

• Then later, Rashid Shaheed threw gas on the fire with a 100-yard kickoff return touchdown

• Shaheed has the longest play of the season, but Tory Horton still has the longest punt return (95 yards) of the season

• Remember that George Holani TD against the Steelers???

• Michael Dickson is reliable, doesn’t have to punt very often

• The Seahawks have the most kickoffs in the NFL and Myers has consistently put the ball where he wants/the coverage is good

• 5th in punt return average, 4th in kickoff return average

Believe it or not, that game against the Falcons is only Seattle’s fifth-best by EPA. They gained even more expected points via special teams against the Rams and in spite of Ethan Evans’s remarkable fourth quarter punt at the 1.

But L.A.’s had issues on special teams all season long.

The Rams are on their second kicker (Harrison Mevis) and how he’d respond to the pressure of a game like this one is still sort of unknown. Mevis is just 5-of-5 on field goals in six games with only one attempt longer than 44 yards. He’s made all 28 extra points (an improvement over the guy he replaced) but opposing kickers being perfect at Lumen Field has never been likely.

I think the Rams just see Mevis as a kicker they’re willing to survive with for the rest of the season and they’ll bring in competition in 2026.

Another odd duck here is kickoffs:

• The Rams are averaging 55% touchbacks on kickoffs

• The second-highest number in the league is 33%

• The third-highest number is 25%

In other words, the only team in the NFL to abandon the idea of kicking into the landing zone is the Rams. They’re too afraid of the penalty that puts the ball at the 40, so they’ve settled for touchbacks that put it at the 35. In the last two games, Evans has kicked off 15 times and had 11 touchbacks.

The vibe in L.A. is that McVay doesn’t trust his special teams. Ironically, that didn’t matter when Evans had the best punt of his life in Week 11. The type of luck isn’t considered repeatable though.

Two of the Rams three losses could be directly tied to special teams gaffes:

• A missed FG and missed PAT in an overtime loss to Niners

• A blocked FG against Eagles that would’ve won the game

Conversely, just in the last two games alone we’ve seen Seattle’s special teams carry the Seahawks when the offense was down. And those are merely average good days for Seattle’s special teams. We’ve seen them be even better several times this year already. If the offense struggles against the Rams, don’t be surprised if it’s Harbaugh carrying Kubiak again.

Good reminder to always watch these All-22 breakdowns! A new one just dropped about the offense:

The new guy

It’s wild that Seattle already had players like Horton, Holani, and Dareke Young prior to trading for Shaheed. While Shaheed’s biggest contributions could come as Sam Darnold’s number two receiver, as evidenced with nine catches in the past two games, his threat as a return man is Percy Harvin-esque.

Shaheed may not have a perfect track record in terms of when he should and shouldn’t field or fair catch a punt or let it drop, he’s a touchdown threat every time he touches the ball. That’s the sole reason that Seattle traded fourth and fifth round picks, depleting much of their 2026 draft stock, to acquire him.

He’ll make any defensive coordinator OR special teams coordinator be honest.

I don’t have any “5 most important players” post coming out on a short week, but here are two:

Rashid Shaheed.

Jason Myers.

The Seahawks and Rams are brothers cut from the same cloth in many ways on both offense and defense. As the best two teams in the league, they have elite receivers, productive quarterbacks, are good-to-great in the trenches, and although L.A. is clearly a better rushing offense, the Seahawks are clearly better on defense.

I cede full credit to Sean McVay for orchestrating such a dominant offense (and run game) in 2025. I think you should too. Because an objective Rams fan would do the same for Mike Macdonald and all three levels of Seattle’s defense. It’s better schemed and more talented than the Rams defense, especially against the pass.

But those advantages for either team on offense/defense could end up equaling each other out.

So what’s left over?

On the TV show Survivor, it’s always said that puzzles are “the great equalizer” of a challenge. No matter how strong you are or how fast you are you can be stopped dead in your tracks at the puzzle portion and even a 10-minute lead can evaporate before you realize that Jeff Probst is putting the immunity necklace onto one of your rivals. (Survivor season 49 finale tonight by the way, anyone out there besides me and Seaside Jay watching?)

I think special teams is the puzzle portion of football. When all else on offense and defense evens out, solve the win on special teams. That’s actually how the Rams got the better of the Seahawks in the closing minutes in the previous game. But all the evidence we have points to that outcome as an anomaly in L.A.’s favor. Is Seattle now bound to get a leg up from special teams in the biggest game of the year so far?

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