The Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots will fight for all the marbles in Super Bowl LX on Sunday in Santa Clara. Both the Pats and Seahawks have been dominant for most of the regular season, but both had to survive tough tests on their playoff road to the Super Bowl.
Seattle was viewed as one of the dominant teams throughout the regular season, with an elite defense and a resurgent Sam Darnold leading one of the most explosive offenses in football. Seattle made it through the regular season 14-3, with those losses coming by just nine combined points, despite being in the toughest division in football. In the postseason, the Seahawks triumphed over both of their NFC West rivals, thumping the 49ers in the Divisional Round before beating the Rams in an epic NFC Championship.
Drake Maye and the Patriots rolled through a regular season schedule that was perceived as easy, losing just three games including a couple of avoidable losses in the first month of the season. New England showed its playoff pedigree throughout a playoff run that included wins over the Chargers, Texans and Broncos, with dominant defensive performances in all three.
That sets up a Super Bowl that nobody would have seen coming before the season, but also one between two of the best teams in the NFL from start to finish this season. How do the Patriots and Seahawks match up on each side of the ball?
Patriots should have tough time on the ground
© David Butler II-Imagn Images
Mike Vrabel wants to run the football, as evidenced by the Patriots’ top-10 run split in the NFL. However, it has been a mixed bag for the Pats on the ground when they have tried to stick to the run this season.
In the regular season, New England finished 11th in EPA per rush thanks to a handful of explosive touchdown scampers from TreVeyon Henderson. However, things weren’t quite as effective on a down-to-down basis. The Patriots finished the regular season with a 40.5% rushing success rate, good for 23rd in the NFL according to Next Gen Stats.
Those numbers have gotten worse in the playoffs, as New England’s EPA per rush has dropped to -0.10 per carry and its success rate is down under 37%. The Pats have played three very good defenses, which could explain that drop-off.
There’s one problem with that: Seattle’s run defense is not only the best that New England has played in this playoff run, it is the best run defense in the NFL this season by a wide margin. Here is a list of the stats Seattle leads the NFL in when it comes to run defense: EPA per rush allowed, rushing yards over expected per carry, fewest rushes of 10+ yards allowed and fewest yards per rush allowed.
Seattle does that while playing almost exclusively sub packages with five or six defensive backs on the field, and Mike Macdonald and company play with two high safeties at a very high rate. Based on both of those tendencies, teams should be able to run the ball on the Seahawks, but nobody outside of the Rams has been able to crack the code so far.
A lot of that unique ability comes down to Nick Emmanwori’s versatility in the nickel.The star rookie has been a revelation for the Seahawks this season, proving to be a great run defender out of the nickel spot while also holding up in coverage, no matter the task. Emmanwori injured his ankle in practice on Wednesday, but is still expected to play, so his health will be something to watch.
The Pats have been leaning more on Rhamondre Stevenson and less on Henderson in these playoffs, a trend which should continue in this Super Bowl. Stevenson finished second in the NFL this season in rushing yards over expected, so maybe he is the one that can get some of the hard yards against this top-shelf Seahawks defensive line.
Watch out for the Drake Maye deep ball
David Butler II-Imagn Images
Drake Maye has emerged as one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL in just his second season. The North Carolina product has become among the best of the best at many things: scrambling, moving in the pocket, layering throws over the middle, being able to get the ball off in traffic, but perhaps none of his skills have stood out this season more than his deep ball ability.
Maye has been the best deep thrower in the NFL this season by a wide margin. During the regular season, Maye completed just over 52% of his passes that traveled 20 or more yards in the air, good for third in the NFL. His 17.6 yards per attempt on those plays ranked second in the league, and his +1.31 EPA per dropback on deep passes led the NFL by a mile (Seattle’s Sam Darnold was second at +0.89), per Next Gen Stats.
If there is one area where teams can get after the Seahawks a little bit, it’s with the deep pass. Seattle wasn’t bad against those plays during the regular season, ranking eighth in EPA per play, but that’s a lot closer to average than Macdonald’s defense is in a lot of other areas.
In the NFC Championship Game, Matthew Stafford feasted on this Seattle secondary on these downfield throws, and Maye will be hoping to do the same in the Super Bowl. Stafford finished 7-for-11 on throws 20+ yards downfield with 226 yards and a touchdown, including a couple of huge completions to Puka Nacua.
Kayshon Boutte has been Maye’s top target on those deep shots, finishing top 10 in the NFL in total EPA on deep targets despite just 11 of those plays. If he can get behind the Seattle defense a few times, it could swing this game and allow the Pats to get out in front.
How does the interior of Seattle’s O-Line hold up?
Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
The Seahawks have had a very good offense for much of this season, but the interior of the offensive line can still be a weakness at times. Rookie right guard Grey Zabel has been a revelation for Klint Kubiak’s group, but center Jalen Sundell and left guard Anthony Bradford can be exploited at times.
Bradford especially has been a weakness for the Seahawks for multiple seasons now, and 2025 is no different. He is the lowest graded offensive lineman by PFF in both pass blocking and run blocking, and the Patriots will likely target him over and over again on Sunday. Bradford has allowed 35 pressures this season, which leads the Seahawks, and him doing so again in this game could be a turning point.
The Patriots are well-coached and well-schemed on defense, so expect to see a lot of stunts and games directed at Bradford on Sunday in an attempt to collapse the pocket. More importantly, New England has one of the best defensive tackle duos in football with Milton Williams and Christian Barmore.
This postseason, Williams ranks third among all players with 17 pressures, notching three sacks in the process. Barmore has eight pressures of his own and has been stout against the run, and defensive tackle Cory Durden also has 13 pressures for the Pats this postseason according to PFF.
The Seahawks’ run game has been inconsistent for a lot of the season, but has been very good in their two playoff wins so far. On top of that, while Darnold is having the best season of his career, he still finished 28th in the NFL in EPA per dropback when under pressure according to Next Gen Stats. If Bradford and the rest of the Seattle interior is consistently losing, things can blow up in the Seahawks’ face quickly on Sunday.
Seahawks will create Jaxon Smith-Njigba targets by moving him around
Steven Bisig-Imagn Images
Jaxon Smith-Njigba joined the elite group of wide receivers in the NFL with one of the best receiving seasons of the modern era in 2025, and he does things a little bit differently than a lot of the most imposing players in the league at that position. The Ohio State product isn’t the most physically imposing or athletically gifted, but he understands the nuance of the wide receiver position better than just about anyone else.
Smith-Njigba is one of the best route-runners in the league and understands how to use his body at the catch point to make contested grabs. This season, he caught 119 passes for a league-leading 1,753 yards and 10 touchdowns as the focal point of a Seahawks passing game that didn’t have another high-volume target all season.
Smith-Njigba continued his dominance in the playoffs, finding the end zone once in the Divisional Round before catching 10 balls for 153 yards and a score against the Rams in the NFC title game.
While the former first-rounder has proven to be almost impossible to cover this season, Kubiak has consistently weaponized his alignment to create mismatches in different areas of the field. Take his touchdown in the NFC title game, for example. The star receiver lines up in the backfield and Kubiak calls a scissors concept, forcing the Rams linebackers to pass off his route. They drop him, and he’s open for the score.
Guess who?! JSN.
LARvsSEA on FOX/FOX One
Stream on @NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/n5xJggtR4n
— NFL (@NFL) January 26, 2026
During the regular season this year, Smith-Njigba finished ninth in the NFL in total receiving EPA on targets out of the backfield despite only five targets on such plays. He also ranked in the top 20 in total EPA on both slot and outside targets, according to Next Gen Stats, so defenses had major problems with him no matter where he lined up.
Kubiak is unlocking more and more wrinkles for Smith-Njigba as the games get more important. After taking just 11 snaps in the backfield during the regular season, he has recorded six such snaps in Seattle’s two playoff games, per PFF. Expect to see that more in the Super Bowl, especially against a Pats defense that has some coverage weaknesses at linebacker and safety. Moving Smith-Njigba around is also a way to get him away from Patriots star cornerback Christian Gonzalez, which should automatically be an advantage for Seattle.
What decides the game?
If the Seahawks can prevent those explosive plays that Maye has feasted on throughout the season, it will probably be very hard for the Patriots to move the ball with long, methodical drives like the Rams were able to in the NFC Championship Game. New England has an inferior offensive line, running game and receiving core compared to the Rams, which will make it difficult to execute over and over against Seattle’s defense.
On the other side of the ball, Williams and Barmore have a chance to truly wreck this game, a la Von Miller and the Denver defensive line back in Super Bowl 50 — the last time the big game was played in Santa Clara. New England’s path to winning likely lies in making this a defensive struggle and leaning on the better quarterback to make a few more plays, and it has the advantages on defense to do just that.
There’s also Darnold, who has continued to reverse his trend as a big-game bust this season. He is coming off of arguably the best game of his career in the NFC title game, where he went toe-to-toe with the NFL MVP and outdueled Matthew Stafford to get to this point. If that Darnold shows up again, Seattle should be getting its hands on the Lombardi Trophy.
The post Super Bowl LX preview: All of the keys, matchups to watch in Seahawks-Patriots appeared first on ClutchPoints.
