Through their dominant defensive play and battle-tested team, the Seattle Seahawks will win Super LX at Levi’s Stadium and hoist the second championship in their franchise’s history.
The Seahawks will face off with the New England Patriots in a highly anticipated matchup featuring the NFL’s two most balanced teams in terms of offensive and defensive league ranking. This is why the game will be won by the individual matchups on the field and not the collective team effort.
I believe that the Seahawks will win because of their defense, as they rank as the number one total defense in the NFL with a top-three rushing defense and a top-ten passing defense, according to a Pro Football Reference webpage.
Players on the defensive line such as Leonard Williams, Byron Murphy II, Uchenna Nwosu and DeMarcus Lawrence are the reason the defense is the best in the sport, with all having at least six sacks on the season.
The Seahawks’ defensive line is one of the best at generating pressure on the quarterback, as their pressure rate is ranked sixth in the NFL at an astounding 26.1%, according to a Pro Football Reference webpage.
Pressure rate refers to the percentage of plays in which the quarterback is pressured by the defense, it can mean a quarterback ends up sacked, knocked down or hurried by the defense.
This defensive line creates a mismatch between them and the Patriots’ offensive line that has given up 48 sacks on the season, the ninth worst in the NFL, according to another Pro Football Reference webpage.
Patriots quarterback Drake Maye will have to put up the best game of his life if he wants to defeat the league’s number one defense with players around him you wouldn’t consider as “superstars.”
The incredible defense is complemented by a Seahawks’ offense that is very effective, with one of the best wide receivers in the league Jaxon Smith-Njigba, a thousand-yard running back in Kenneth Walker III and a veteran quarterback in Sam Darnold who has now shown us that he can play in big games.
Even with the Patriots lining up with a top defense in the NFL, the Seahawks should be able to handle them. The offensive line has been one of the best, as they have been great in both pass protection and run blocking by averaging 4.1 yards per carry and ranking among the top in fewest sacks allowed, according to another Pro Football Reference webpage.
Darnold has been efficient this year, completing 67% of his passes and throwing for over 4,000 yards this season. He’s coming off the best game of his career in the NFC Championship versus the Los Angeles Rams where he threw for 346 yards and three touchdowns.
The area of concern for the Seahawks is how they will continue to fare without backup running back Zach Charbonnet, as he went out injured with a torn ACL against the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional round and will not be playing in the Super Bowl.
Charbonnet ran for over 700 yards this season and scored 12 times, while Walker III only scored five times this season. Last week against the Rams, Walker III carried the ball 19 times for 62 yards, averaging 3.3 yards per carry, which is well below the league average of four.
However, the Seahawks didn’t need Walker to provide the offense on the ground when Darnold threw for over 300 yards and Smith-Njigba caught 10 passes for 153 yards, giving fans hope that they can replicate their performance against the Patriots in the Super Bowl.
The Seahawks have shown that they can win any way possible this season, whether it’s through their defense or offense, which proves that they are the perfect team to defeat the Patriots in the Super Bowl.
