What could go wrong?

3 things that the Seahawks don't want to mess up against the Patriots

The Seattle Seahawks are the favorites and most onlookers are picking them to beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. But there’s a long way to go in between the expectation to win and the execution to win.

I’ve written a lot over the last nine days about why the Seahawks should win. It’s worth exploring some possibilities for how the Seahawks could lose.

Could go wrong: Turn the ball over

Every team invites trouble when they turn the ball over, but I think there are two myths about the Seahawks turnovers that need to be debunked, or at least given context because of how unique Seattle is this season.

1. The Seahawks won an NFL-best 10 games this year when they turned over the ball at least once (overall 10-3 record) and 6 games* when they turned it over twice (6-3)

2. Over their most recent 9 games, the Patriots have turned it over more times (9) than the Seahawks (8)

*Seattle’s 6 wins when they had multiple turnovers is TWICE as many as second place. Great defense and great special teams has given the Seahawks an indestructible feeling when they make a mistake on offense. It doesn’t mean that they are indestructible, but that’s a confidence that must give Seattle an advantage when there’s a turnover because nobody on the team should feel like they lost the game in that moment.

I mean…remember when Sam Darnold threw a pick in the fourth quarter against the Rams when the Seahawks were already down 16? And they still won!

That has to come from Darnold a little bit because he knows as well as anybody what it’s like to turn the ball over and he never looks rattled when it happens. He threw four picks against the Rams in one game and still almost drove Seattle into acceptable field goal range.

The other half of this is that the “Seahawks have a turnover problem” narrative is outdated. The Seahawks haven’t turned the ball over in their last three games and New England has been a much more loosey-goosey offense in the playoffs. This all plays back into “turnover luck” and regression, which suggests that:

Worst case scenario, neither team has an advantage or disadvantage in the turnover battle going into the game.

Drake Maye had six fumbles and two interceptions in the Patriots first two playoff games and the only thing that may have saved him from any in the NFC Championship game was New England’s conservative approach in the snow.

The Seahawks turning the ball over would mean that Seattle has a trickier road to navigate in a game where they have more apparent advantages than the Patriots. They are 10-0 when they don’t turn it over more than once, so yeah, this is a clear “what can go wrong?” argument.

However, the Seahawks also somehow won 5 games by 8+ points when they turned it over at least twice (including wins over 3 playoff teams in this manner) which makes Seattle only the sixth team since 2000 to do that.

Yes, the Seahawks can “beat themselves”. They can also beat the themselves that beat themselves.

Could go wrong: Never get the run game going

Something changed for the Seahawks during their Week 9 win over the Arizona Cardinals. After that, Seattle ranked 5th in rushing yards and tied 10th in yards per carry in the final nine games of the regular season.

Then in the divisional round, they rushed for 175 yards against the 49ers, their third-best total of the season.

The loss of Zach Charbonnet robbed the Seahawks of a valuable weapon in the backfield who won’t be replaced by George Holani…

But Seattle can still confidently tell themselves that they’re as good of a rushing team as any team in the Super Bowl. (The Patriots were fourth in rushing yards over the last nine games, which is all of 35 more yards than Seattle.)

Now here’s what I think needs to be given context:

There’s been talk about how good the Patriots run defense has been in the playoffs.

Warren Sharp tweets: “SEA's defense allows a NFL best 36% rushing success In the playoffs, NE's defense has allowed an even better 32% rushing success.”

In the playoffs, the Seahawks have faced Christian McCaffrey and Kyren Williams/Blake Corum. One of the best running backs (but a bad offense overall) and one of the best rushing teams in the NFL (Rams).

The Patriots have faced:

• Kimani Vidal, Chargers (idk who that is)

• Woody Marks, Texans (4th round rookie)

• RJ Harvey, Broncos (2nd round rookie)

I know we’re not basing a team’s entire rushing attack on the quality of their starting running back but certainly a comparison between say McCaffrey or Kenneth Walker and all of the backs that New England has faced in the postseason warrants a discussion.

“The Patriots are shutting down running backs in the playoffs” holds little relevance when we’re comparing three backs who failed to reach 750 yards (Marks had the most at 703) this season and a player having the best 5-game stretch of his career right now.

The Pariots held Marks to 17 yards on 14 carries. The Seahawks held Marks to 15 yards on 10 carries in Week 7.

It’s Woody Marks on the 29th-ranked rushing offense. The Chargers have lost all of their tackles. The Broncos were tasked with rushing against the Patriots in freezing temperatures; contrary to what you may have heard, I heard NFL players say that it’s actually harder to run when it’s cold and potentially difficult to get solid footing.

The Patriots run defense ranked somewhere between 10th-15th in the regular season (11th by EPA, 13th by YPC, and 17th by DVOA) and Cody Alexander mentioned in MatchQuarters that they were “32nd in power run success rate”.

So whether New England’s run defense is actually improved in the playoffs or not, two truths remain in tact:

• They haven’t faced a rushing offense like Seattle’s or a running back like Walker since the Ravens in Week 16 (allowed 171 yards and Lamar missed half of the game)

• The Patriots would have to play better than they did in the regular season to contain Walker in the Super Bowl

I don’t quite believe their postseason run defense success, only because historical wisdom suggests that teams and players don’t change that fast + the matchups have been in their advantage.

BUT if the Seahawks can’t get the run game going against the Patriots on Sunday, then yes the rest of the offense is in trouble. Not because Darnold can’t handle the responsibility to carry the offense if he needs to but because it plays into New England’s best hope which is trying to force a turnover in Seattle territory.

The Patriots rank 25th in pass defense DVOA though, so I wouldn’t say that it plays into New England’s strength either.

Could go wrong: Drake Maye has the game of his life

Most NFL fans have the same general, non-specific team dream for the sport we love so much:

Better. Great. Quarterbacks.

Maybe you don’t want him in your division on a rival team, but the league is just better when the quarterbacks know what they’re doing and have the ability to wow you. We’ll spend a lot more time talking about the great quarterbacks like Dan Marino or Tom Brady than we will the great cornerbacks or tackles or running backs … and that’s not to say that we don’t appreciate all of them or even that we don’t value them the same.

But when it comes to primetime games, playoff games, and nationally-televised games, the NFL is relying heavily on the league’s top QUARTERBACKS to create must-see TV. That’s just how the world works.

Case in point the Super Bowl IS:

A guaranteed storyline for every game is “Who are the quarterbacks and which team has the QB advantage?”

All that being said there is a strong pull this week for Drake Maye to step into the role of being the NFL’s next great quarterback and he arrives at a time when so many of his peers are underwhelming.

At 23, Maye led the NFL in passer rating (113.5) but every other QB in the top-16 (aka above average) was at least 26.

• Brock Purdy is 26 (8th in passer rating and not a high draft pick)

• Love, Hurts, Herbert, and Mac Jones are 27 (Jones is a backup)

• Darnold, Daniel Jones, and Lamar are 28

We’re talking about a QB landscape in which not only is Mac Jones “young” for his peer group, he’s playing better than C.J. Stroud, Bryce Young, Michael Penix, Justin Fields, J.J. McCarthy, and Cam Ward.

When you could argue that Daniel Jones outplayed Trevor Lawrence.

And the MVP of the league is 37.

The incoming crop of QBs since 2019, at least, has not been relatively good. And I’m mostly also speaking of all the first round picks who have failed to live up to their draft billing and in many cases their contract extensions (Lawrence, Herbert, Murray, Lamar, Love, Tua, etc.)

Now here comes Drake Maye and fans have hope that maybe it’s still possible for a highly-touted early draft pick to be a great quarterback within the first few seasons of his career. Maye led the NFL in completion rate and Y/A, building a case to be MVP over Matthew Stafford, and he’s won win away from leading the Patriots to a Super Bowl directly after going 8-26 over the previous two seasons.

It’s all very hopeful sounding to people rooting for him to succeed … until it’s not.

Maye’s dominance in the regular season came against (by far) the easiest schedule of defenses in the NFL by DVOA.

It has not carried over into a playoff run against three defenses far better than the competition he faced in the AFC East. The Texans and Broncos lost those games because of their quarterbacks and their coaches and a little bad luck, not because of New England’s offense, as you might have expected to be the case given Maye’s immense success in the regular season.

It’s just real: Maye hasn’t been as good as his raw, basic stats suggest.

Yes, we can say that Maye deserves the benefit of the doubt because his offensive line is below-average and most fans couldn’t name a receiver on the team aside from Stefon Diggs, if they even remember Stefon Diggs.

But it’s not about excusing WHY Maye has struggled in the playoffs. It’s only about pointing out that the offense hasn’t been good — regardless of the reasons for it — and that the Seattle Seahawks are either the best defense they’ve faced all year or at least as good as the Texans defense.

The Texans sacked Maye five times, intercepted him once, and held New England to 6.6 yards per attempt, which was over 2 yards worse than Maye’s season average.

But if Maye can be super-human in this game, emerge from the skepticism about his abilities to carry an offense against a great defense like Seattle’s, and push the Patriots offense into 2-3 touchdown drives, then the Seahawks have a tough matchup on their hands that could ruin the end of their season.

It’s the Super Bowl. It’s one game. We’ve seen Super Bowl upsets since Super Bowl III. So yeah, there are things that can go wrong for Seattle that would cause them to lose — any of the above examples or more — but it’ll be hard for the Seahawks to lose if they just execute in all three phases as they’ve been doing for the last three months continuously.

Seaside Joe 2527