Damn...one of the things that could go wrong is being the overwhelming favorites -- not only is the line very strong at -4.5, but 21 out of 24 NFL.Com analysts have picked Seattle and the three who picked NE are losing by at most a field goal. So much prefer to be the underdog and sneak up on people, but I guess we've just played too well to sneak up on anyone.
By the way, yes still several references to Darnold's interceptions.
I'm already to the point where if he has one, or even two, it's just part of the game at this point. Long past the "Darnold will see ghosts" after watching him in the highest-pressure possible game -- Rams with McVey and Matthew Stafford on the other side scoring at will. If there was ever a moment to bury foreven that he melts in pressure situations, that was it. Now it's just noice, like you said. Even if he has one or two.
Lots of ways to win (as NE has found out), and lots of ways to lose. I've said it for the past number of weeks.....just play our game. If we do that, we'll be in good shape. Sam needs to hear from Mike and Klint that he does NOT have to win the game for us. Just run the offense. Run each play as it's called, and don't try to do too much. Take a sack over a risky throw. Make them drive long fields against our defense. Take the opportunities as they present themselves.
The Seahawks have enough vets, I don't think they'll let the younger players get over-hyped, and try to do too much. If we just play our game with the same intensity, physicality, and smarts as we have been playing, we'll be just fine. We'll be the best team NE has seen all year, and that will become apparent rather early in the game.
Agreed. I think they gave him that message weeks ago and he has had plenty of practice playing that way so that it has become a part of game. He has improved by taking what is there and running the offense, as evidenced by his reduction in turnovers. This is just another game he has to play like he has been already.
That’s a great clip. I love how at the end he’s saying that maybe if the Patriots do ALL the little things right, that maybe they have a chance. Yet how he says it makes it clear. They have no chance against the Hawks.
Their ONLY chance is for the Seahawks to beat themselves with penalties, turnovers, and lack of attention to detail. THEN, they have a chance... a small chance, but one nonetheless.
Unless someone wants to posit the Bills, I’d argue Seattle has played 6 games against teams that are better than NE and who know us better than NE — SF and Rams. We won 4 of the 6 and arguably could have won all 6.
Point being, we’re more battle tested and very unlikely to lose by much. Whereas NE could get beaten pretty soundly.
I don't know ball around the league but knowing the NFC West. And taking Hawks homerism out of it. If SF was in the SB against NE I'd be expecting an even match. If the Rams were, I'd be expecting a solid win. And we are proven better than both of those teams, and there's nothing in particular that NE matches up much better against the Hawks to suggest a hidden advantage.
If we don't win, we won't come after SSJ with pitchforks and other farm implements. Rest easy, Kenneth we are all adults here and know the football can bounce funny and it's a game of micro inches. Anything can happen. On any given Sunday. Add your own cliche's...
Follow up point about the Pats playoff run defense.
In the first two games the Pats went out to a lead. The other team was playing from behind so they were probably passing more and running less when they were behind, trying to catch up. For the whole game, in the first two games, the Pats opponents had more passing plays than running plays. Then again, maybe they were passing more because their rushing offense was so bad.
Texans hung Stroud out to dry the whole first half despite his obvious yips in the snow, and didn't adjust until later to run it more and settle him down. At one point they started running pretty well finally, but the RB had a back breaking fumble deep in Pats territory (credit Pats for forcing it of course). And that was that.
For an article about how the Seahawks might lose, this sure makes it sound like they can't lose :)
I really think turnovers are the only realistic threat to us in this game. If the run game never gets going, it's almost guaranteed that the passing game works (as we've seen all year). Drake Maye can't control his receivers' ability to get open or the scheme and plays. The best he can do is avoid mistakes, hit open targets, and improvise successfully when needed. I think the greater threat from their offense is that Josh McDaniels is able to slow down the game and control time of possession. I don't think they have the firepower for Drake Maye to have the game of his life, even if he plays flawlessly. Turnovers and injuries seem like the only things that could realistically go wrong.
Based on Dropback EPA/Rush EPA combination (basically defensive EPA) the Top-5 teams in the Playoffs were #1 Texans, #2 Patriots, #3 Seahawks, #4 Broncos, #5 Chargers. Yep, each team that faced the Patriots had some of their best defensive games of the entire year. And, presumably, we have at worst a functioning offense, unlike the Texans, Broncos or Chargers.
Again, like ahead of the Rams game, I don't want to get too carried away... but like... c'mon... this Pats team is not bad, but it's not in the same weight class as we are. This is like Jake Paul boxing Anthony Joshua, one's an underdog every single person on earth despises that is no way close to ready for the big stage, and the others an powerhouse professional that doesn't really have a weakness nor knows how to show mercy.
What could go wrong? Potentially a lot, but I firmly believe we'd need to play our worst game of the year, worse than Wk 1 against the 49ers. And even then this would still be a close game. I'm sorry Pats, you had a fun turnaround story but welcome to the NFL, we're going to pants you in front of a global tv audience.
Worse game prob not the week 1 but week 5 Tampa. And that is the kind of game/issue that NE could get us with. As long as we don’t play down like that game should be a good one for us. But even with how bad that game was, we were still in it.
The secondary was down to salt and duds, though: Spoon and Love didn’t play, and the Bucs scored 24 of their 38 points after Woolen went out. Okada had an awful game (he got much better as the season progressed) and Mayfield worked over Pritchett. Lawrence may have been out as well. Not the same team.
I’m with you. If we play our game, I don’t see how they play their game. If we don’t play our game, we can still win. They win only if we lay a brontosaurus egg.
I don't really fear them not establishing the run. It sounds like the Pats' strength in stopping the run has really come against two teams that don't run all that well and their defensive line strength is interior and less lateral. I'm sure they're drilling like mad on beating zone blocking, but you can't train lateral speed (you can train technique).
I also expect Seattle to read for blitzes and pressures and use screens and dumps to KWIII and probably also Barner, etc., to force the Pats to play both wide and what other teams have had to do, which is some sort of zone.
If you re-watch the win over the Rams, which has a faster, more capable defense (minus the excellent corners that the Pats have), a lot of Seattle's schemes forced the Rams to make tough choices, and minimized Seattle's weakness (Bradford) as much as possible. I'm certain Vrabel will try to play substitution games against Seattle, and I would expect a bunch of pacing to counter that — just as I bet McDaniel does that for the Pats' offense. Talent for talent, though, it's pretty obvious Seattle has an edge.
On turnovers, yep. That's really QED. But going with the last time Seattle had two weeks to prepare, my hope is definitely that everyone is well drilled on what to do and how to defeat the Pats.
Which of course leads to Maye going off. He DOES have a great long-ball arm. And we saw, on multiple plays, Seattle defenders failing to track deep-ball throws against Stafford. But there's a distinction: Stafford has astonishing talent for throwing into tight windows. Maye's more like Love: He can throw just over the defense, especially on sideline routes. More like Russ in his heyday. But like Russ, Maye too readily trusts his elusiveness, which means he holds the ball too long and that's why both his fumble and sack totals are high. DLAW knows this. I am certain Maye will escape some — but also that one of many ways Seattle wins is by turning him over. Further, if that throwing shoulder is at all sore, it could make it tougher for him to throw accurately.
Probably, lastly, I'm guessing Seattle fans are going to be LOUD in Santa Clara. And that could also pose a problem for the Pats.
Don't forget: Maye is young, too. It's not necessarily that the stage will be too big for him, but the margin for error will be a lot tighter.
Stafford has Puka, who is great at getting open on the deep sideline with no room to maneuver, making contested catches, and playing defense to break up INTs when required. To the last point, Maye can try his luck on these balls but there's nobody giving him the safety net of Puka where QB can be confident the worst case scenario is an incompletion.
Yeah. Puka broke up two interceptions in the playoffs this year that would have ended the Rams. He saved Stafford's ass. Love him or hate him, there is no denying that he is a great player.
If you drive by any Twitter thread you'll see Pats fans calling the Rams defense terrible. So much revisionist history here, Rams have a plenty good defense, Kubiak and SD just cracked it. I don't think there's any categorical difference between Rams and Pats defenses overall.
Meanwhile the Niners have a clearly better offense than the Pats and just got vaporized twice in a row.
Some additional context to the Patriots playoff opponent's run game:
- Chargers: Down both starting Tackles. Omarion Hampton, active but injured (played 2 downs).
- Texans: No Nico Collins. Dalton Schultz injured in 1st quarter. Little easier to stack the box, run blitz, and play man against the likes of Jayden Higgins/Christian Kirk. Plus, Cade Stover isn't near the run blocking tight end of Schultz.
- Broncos: No Bo Nix. Little easier to stop the run, when you're less worried about the quarterbacks ability. And Broncos run game was not the same when JK Dobbins got hurt in week 10.
That being said, with Milton Williams (interior DL star of NE) healthy, the Pats have only allowed 100 yards rushing, 3 times (out of 13 games).
Too many variables going on to feel 100% confident, but I can guarantee the Seahawks are better at running the ball then the 3 playoff teams they've faces.
I saw a post the other day that the Pats only something like 3 or 4 games against teams that retained their head coach. And lost 2 (or more) of the games against the teams that fired their coaches. *please excuse not having the exact numbers*
That's crazy, I have to assume that they're the first team to have faced that many teams that replace their coach and make it to the Superbowl?? I feel like I saw something similar, and then they related it to how no team has wone the Superbowl with a strength of schedule worst that 16th, and the Patriots where ranked 32nd this year. Obviously you can only play who you play, but c'mon!
The internet news pages, and social media are flooded with predictions, doom, gloom, criticism and hype over the coming game. They are creating chaos of the mind. At some point, they are going to experience no more clicks as fans act on their burn-out.
So grateful for you laying out the facts with the reality this game should be won by the Hawks but anything can happen on game day to not claim a certainty that leads to false hope. Should something go wrong, and the Patriots cheat with the help of the refs, I won't collapse in a puddle of despair.
I don't know who is going to win this game but here is a small point.
When the Pats played the Texans, the Texans turned it over five times. There were four interceptions and one fumble.
One of the interceptions was returned for a touchdown, a pick six. After the other four turnovers, they didn't make a first down. After three of the turnovers they punted and the other time they fumbled the ball away.
I like to think a good team converts turnovers into points, but the Pats only did in once out of five times. I tried to look up the stat for that but I couldn't find it. If anyone knows where to look please feel free to point it out.
And in that game, for those of you that care, with five turnovers the Pats average drive began at their 33 yard line.
They also had 15 drives and only scored on 3.
Just using this game as a reference, I think we win. And by at least a few scores. Or more.
If you can't convert turnovers into points I don't think you can beat the Seahawks.
This week, I was manually scraping stats on the Pats, which had me skimming the play by play for all of their games. In many of the games, there was a Keystone Kops vibe. Lots of bad football.
In a similar exercise for Seahawks games, there were some “oof” moments, but the quality of play from both the Seahawks and their opponents felt more competent.
It’s interesting. We’ve seen close games with high and low scores where it felt like both teams played well. For the high score games, it’s “how do you defend that?” For low score games, it’s “great defense!” But we’ve also seen games where both teams seem to be trying to beat themselves. The well-played games are so much more fun to watch!
Damn...one of the things that could go wrong is being the overwhelming favorites -- not only is the line very strong at -4.5, but 21 out of 24 NFL.Com analysts have picked Seattle and the three who picked NE are losing by at most a field goal. So much prefer to be the underdog and sneak up on people, but I guess we've just played too well to sneak up on anyone.
By the way, yes still several references to Darnold's interceptions.
I'm already to the point where if he has one, or even two, it's just part of the game at this point. Long past the "Darnold will see ghosts" after watching him in the highest-pressure possible game -- Rams with McVey and Matthew Stafford on the other side scoring at will. If there was ever a moment to bury foreven that he melts in pressure situations, that was it. Now it's just noice, like you said. Even if he has one or two.
Lots of ways to win (as NE has found out), and lots of ways to lose. I've said it for the past number of weeks.....just play our game. If we do that, we'll be in good shape. Sam needs to hear from Mike and Klint that he does NOT have to win the game for us. Just run the offense. Run each play as it's called, and don't try to do too much. Take a sack over a risky throw. Make them drive long fields against our defense. Take the opportunities as they present themselves.
The Seahawks have enough vets, I don't think they'll let the younger players get over-hyped, and try to do too much. If we just play our game with the same intensity, physicality, and smarts as we have been playing, we'll be just fine. We'll be the best team NE has seen all year, and that will become apparent rather early in the game.
Agreed. I think they gave him that message weeks ago and he has had plenty of practice playing that way so that it has become a part of game. He has improved by taking what is there and running the offense, as evidenced by his reduction in turnovers. This is just another game he has to play like he has been already.
100%
Fred Warner on the Hawks weaknesses...
https://x.com/upandadamsshow/status/2018805090237166007
That’s a great clip. I love how at the end he’s saying that maybe if the Patriots do ALL the little things right, that maybe they have a chance. Yet how he says it makes it clear. They have no chance against the Hawks.
Their ONLY chance is for the Seahawks to beat themselves with penalties, turnovers, and lack of attention to detail. THEN, they have a chance... a small chance, but one nonetheless.
Good One, BR. Fun, 'n short, listen.
Hope Mr. Fred Warner returns from his injury fine 'n strong. He's Cool.
Unless someone wants to posit the Bills, I’d argue Seattle has played 6 games against teams that are better than NE and who know us better than NE — SF and Rams. We won 4 of the 6 and arguably could have won all 6.
Point being, we’re more battle tested and very unlikely to lose by much. Whereas NE could get beaten pretty soundly.
I don't know ball around the league but knowing the NFC West. And taking Hawks homerism out of it. If SF was in the SB against NE I'd be expecting an even match. If the Rams were, I'd be expecting a solid win. And we are proven better than both of those teams, and there's nothing in particular that NE matches up much better against the Hawks to suggest a hidden advantage.
If we don't win, we won't come after SSJ with pitchforks and other farm implements. Rest easy, Kenneth we are all adults here and know the football can bounce funny and it's a game of micro inches. Anything can happen. On any given Sunday. Add your own cliche's...
Follow up point about the Pats playoff run defense.
In the first two games the Pats went out to a lead. The other team was playing from behind so they were probably passing more and running less when they were behind, trying to catch up. For the whole game, in the first two games, the Pats opponents had more passing plays than running plays. Then again, maybe they were passing more because their rushing offense was so bad.
Texans hung Stroud out to dry the whole first half despite his obvious yips in the snow, and didn't adjust until later to run it more and settle him down. At one point they started running pretty well finally, but the RB had a back breaking fumble deep in Pats territory (credit Pats for forcing it of course). And that was that.
For an article about how the Seahawks might lose, this sure makes it sound like they can't lose :)
I really think turnovers are the only realistic threat to us in this game. If the run game never gets going, it's almost guaranteed that the passing game works (as we've seen all year). Drake Maye can't control his receivers' ability to get open or the scheme and plays. The best he can do is avoid mistakes, hit open targets, and improvise successfully when needed. I think the greater threat from their offense is that Josh McDaniels is able to slow down the game and control time of possession. I don't think they have the firepower for Drake Maye to have the game of his life, even if he plays flawlessly. Turnovers and injuries seem like the only things that could realistically go wrong.
Based on Dropback EPA/Rush EPA combination (basically defensive EPA) the Top-5 teams in the Playoffs were #1 Texans, #2 Patriots, #3 Seahawks, #4 Broncos, #5 Chargers. Yep, each team that faced the Patriots had some of their best defensive games of the entire year. And, presumably, we have at worst a functioning offense, unlike the Texans, Broncos or Chargers.
Again, like ahead of the Rams game, I don't want to get too carried away... but like... c'mon... this Pats team is not bad, but it's not in the same weight class as we are. This is like Jake Paul boxing Anthony Joshua, one's an underdog every single person on earth despises that is no way close to ready for the big stage, and the others an powerhouse professional that doesn't really have a weakness nor knows how to show mercy.
What could go wrong? Potentially a lot, but I firmly believe we'd need to play our worst game of the year, worse than Wk 1 against the 49ers. And even then this would still be a close game. I'm sorry Pats, you had a fun turnaround story but welcome to the NFL, we're going to pants you in front of a global tv audience.
Worse game prob not the week 1 but week 5 Tampa. And that is the kind of game/issue that NE could get us with. As long as we don’t play down like that game should be a good one for us. But even with how bad that game was, we were still in it.
The secondary was down to salt and duds, though: Spoon and Love didn’t play, and the Bucs scored 24 of their 38 points after Woolen went out. Okada had an awful game (he got much better as the season progressed) and Mayfield worked over Pritchett. Lawrence may have been out as well. Not the same team.
Which is why I said that was our worse game overall. Week 1 all new team and lost Nick on first play after he made a great play.
I’m with you. If we play our game, I don’t see how they play their game. If we don’t play our game, we can still win. They win only if we lay a brontosaurus egg.
I don't really fear them not establishing the run. It sounds like the Pats' strength in stopping the run has really come against two teams that don't run all that well and their defensive line strength is interior and less lateral. I'm sure they're drilling like mad on beating zone blocking, but you can't train lateral speed (you can train technique).
I also expect Seattle to read for blitzes and pressures and use screens and dumps to KWIII and probably also Barner, etc., to force the Pats to play both wide and what other teams have had to do, which is some sort of zone.
If you re-watch the win over the Rams, which has a faster, more capable defense (minus the excellent corners that the Pats have), a lot of Seattle's schemes forced the Rams to make tough choices, and minimized Seattle's weakness (Bradford) as much as possible. I'm certain Vrabel will try to play substitution games against Seattle, and I would expect a bunch of pacing to counter that — just as I bet McDaniel does that for the Pats' offense. Talent for talent, though, it's pretty obvious Seattle has an edge.
On turnovers, yep. That's really QED. But going with the last time Seattle had two weeks to prepare, my hope is definitely that everyone is well drilled on what to do and how to defeat the Pats.
Which of course leads to Maye going off. He DOES have a great long-ball arm. And we saw, on multiple plays, Seattle defenders failing to track deep-ball throws against Stafford. But there's a distinction: Stafford has astonishing talent for throwing into tight windows. Maye's more like Love: He can throw just over the defense, especially on sideline routes. More like Russ in his heyday. But like Russ, Maye too readily trusts his elusiveness, which means he holds the ball too long and that's why both his fumble and sack totals are high. DLAW knows this. I am certain Maye will escape some — but also that one of many ways Seattle wins is by turning him over. Further, if that throwing shoulder is at all sore, it could make it tougher for him to throw accurately.
Probably, lastly, I'm guessing Seattle fans are going to be LOUD in Santa Clara. And that could also pose a problem for the Pats.
Don't forget: Maye is young, too. It's not necessarily that the stage will be too big for him, but the margin for error will be a lot tighter.
Stafford has Puka, who is great at getting open on the deep sideline with no room to maneuver, making contested catches, and playing defense to break up INTs when required. To the last point, Maye can try his luck on these balls but there's nobody giving him the safety net of Puka where QB can be confident the worst case scenario is an incompletion.
Yeah. Puka broke up two interceptions in the playoffs this year that would have ended the Rams. He saved Stafford's ass. Love him or hate him, there is no denying that he is a great player.
If you drive by any Twitter thread you'll see Pats fans calling the Rams defense terrible. So much revisionist history here, Rams have a plenty good defense, Kubiak and SD just cracked it. I don't think there's any categorical difference between Rams and Pats defenses overall.
Meanwhile the Niners have a clearly better offense than the Pats and just got vaporized twice in a row.
Some additional context to the Patriots playoff opponent's run game:
- Chargers: Down both starting Tackles. Omarion Hampton, active but injured (played 2 downs).
- Texans: No Nico Collins. Dalton Schultz injured in 1st quarter. Little easier to stack the box, run blitz, and play man against the likes of Jayden Higgins/Christian Kirk. Plus, Cade Stover isn't near the run blocking tight end of Schultz.
- Broncos: No Bo Nix. Little easier to stop the run, when you're less worried about the quarterbacks ability. And Broncos run game was not the same when JK Dobbins got hurt in week 10.
That being said, with Milton Williams (interior DL star of NE) healthy, the Pats have only allowed 100 yards rushing, 3 times (out of 13 games).
Too many variables going on to feel 100% confident, but I can guarantee the Seahawks are better at running the ball then the 3 playoff teams they've faces.
I saw a post the other day that the Pats only something like 3 or 4 games against teams that retained their head coach. And lost 2 (or more) of the games against the teams that fired their coaches. *please excuse not having the exact numbers*
That's crazy, I have to assume that they're the first team to have faced that many teams that replace their coach and make it to the Superbowl?? I feel like I saw something similar, and then they related it to how no team has wone the Superbowl with a strength of schedule worst that 16th, and the Patriots where ranked 32nd this year. Obviously you can only play who you play, but c'mon!
The internet news pages, and social media are flooded with predictions, doom, gloom, criticism and hype over the coming game. They are creating chaos of the mind. At some point, they are going to experience no more clicks as fans act on their burn-out.
So grateful for you laying out the facts with the reality this game should be won by the Hawks but anything can happen on game day to not claim a certainty that leads to false hope. Should something go wrong, and the Patriots cheat with the help of the refs, I won't collapse in a puddle of despair.
I don't know who is going to win this game but here is a small point.
When the Pats played the Texans, the Texans turned it over five times. There were four interceptions and one fumble.
One of the interceptions was returned for a touchdown, a pick six. After the other four turnovers, they didn't make a first down. After three of the turnovers they punted and the other time they fumbled the ball away.
I like to think a good team converts turnovers into points, but the Pats only did in once out of five times. I tried to look up the stat for that but I couldn't find it. If anyone knows where to look please feel free to point it out.
And in that game, for those of you that care, with five turnovers the Pats average drive began at their 33 yard line.
They also had 15 drives and only scored on 3.
Just using this game as a reference, I think we win. And by at least a few scores. Or more.
If you can't convert turnovers into points I don't think you can beat the Seahawks.
This week, I was manually scraping stats on the Pats, which had me skimming the play by play for all of their games. In many of the games, there was a Keystone Kops vibe. Lots of bad football.
In a similar exercise for Seahawks games, there were some “oof” moments, but the quality of play from both the Seahawks and their opponents felt more competent.
It’s interesting. We’ve seen close games with high and low scores where it felt like both teams played well. For the high score games, it’s “how do you defend that?” For low score games, it’s “great defense!” But we’ve also seen games where both teams seem to be trying to beat themselves. The well-played games are so much more fun to watch!
What is Keystone Kops?
https://youtu.be/GwUUUqgfu-E?si=JyGG23k8F5gb4VVY
Thaks for this, Sea Hawk Run.
That game was a crazy comedy of errors by both offences.