The Seahawks enter Sunday as the favorite, but there are paths to a Patriots victory. Let's break it all down here.
All roads lead here: to Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. and Super Bowl LX. The Seattle Seahawks enter as the favorite, but there are paths to a New England Patriots victory, which we’ll hit in this Super Bowl edition of the Four Verts column. There’s a lot at stake Sunday. Let’s go over some of the biggest storylines.
Patriots’ offense appears to be outmanned again
New England’s offense has faced some of the toughest defenses the NFL has to offer en route to a Super Bowl berth. In fact, they’ve gotten completely dominated by the Chargers, Texans and Broncos defenses, riding a handful of drives, a defensive touchdown and the help of an overwhelmed backup quarterback in the snow. That’s not to say they don’t deserve to be here. Every team that can weather the storm of attrition to get to this point deserves the ability to play in this game.
Drake Maye is as good as any player who will play Sunday. The second-year quarterback has earned his stamp as an MVP finalist considering he has done an Atlas-level carrying of the offense this season. The Patriots barely had success in the rain against the Texans and their only touchdown drive against the Broncos came on a short field following a baffling decision by Jarrett Stidham to throw the ball backward for a fumble.
Seattle will be New England’s toughest cohesive test yet, barring an explosion from Maye and the supporting cast around him. The Rams pushed the Seahawks to the brink in the NFC championship game, but Puka Nacua, Davante Adams and Sean McVay aren’t walking through that door for the Patriots’ offense. It’s largely going to be up to Maye and a shaky offensive line to stay afloat against a truly dominant defense this season.
Points will be difficult to come by. Maye will have his moments, but when looking at the non-quarterback players on this offense against the Seahawks’ defense, it’s hard not to see how they don’t get stuffed into a locker for the fourth consecutive game. It’s not unreasonable that the Patriots struggled mightily against the defenses they’ve faced this postseason, but they’ll need a little more help to get a win in what should be a clean weather environment.
New England needs star defensive trio to dominate
The Patriots are underdogs in the Super Bowl for good reason. When stacking the rosters of the two teams, it’s clear which one recently picked in the top five of the NFL Draft two straight years, and which one has been a fringe playoff team that reached its final form this past offseason. However, the Patriots aren’t a team that’s completely bereft of talent, and they have a few high-level players who can turn the tide for them if they can play to the best of their abilities. In that respect, cornerback Christian Gonzalez and defensive tackles Milton Williams and Christian Barmore are going to be the lynchpins here.
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The good thing about these players is they play positions of value and all of them can really impact the game with high-level performances, particularly their duo on the interior. There is no better way to shut down Seattle's offense and make life difficult for the Seahawks than to have immediate disruption on the front lines with Barmore and Williams. Seattle’s interior offensive line is one of the weaker parts of its offense. This soft spot gives those two Patriots a prime opportunity to take over the game and provide some relief to their own offense.
Specifically, Seattle’s duo of Jalen Sundell and Anthony Bradford will need help against the Patriots’ defensive tackle duo. There’s also a level of natural symbiosis between defensive line play and secondary play where Barmore and Williams taking advantage of this matchup will actually make things easier for Gonzalez, the third member of this defensive trio that New England needs to play well. Pressure forces bad plays and Gonzalez already showed his ability to make plays on the ball by closing out the Broncos’ offense in the AFC championship game with an interception.
Gonzalez will have his hands full with a matchup against Jaxson Smith-Njigba, who is arguably the best wide receiver in the NFL right now. If he can win just a couple of those battles while Barmore and Williams take advantage of their talent advantage in the trenches, there’s a chance for the Patriots to win.
Those three need to play up to their Pro Bowl billings, because overall this Patriots roster appears to be completely outmatched. If they can do that, New England has a puncher’s chance. Sam Darnold is prone to lapses that lead to turnovers, even though he hasn’t done that yet in the postseason. Getting the ball back to Maye and the offense will be imperative, but that’s easier said than done.
Sam Darnold needs to make it just one more game
One more game, Sam. Just one more.
While the Seahawks’ offense was flustered over the second half of the season, Sam Darnold has played really clean football through these playoffs. If he can make it one more game without tanking himself and having a classic Darnold implosion, Seattle should cruise to a Super Bowl victory and he can change the narrative on himself. Darnold has become one of the most fascinating quarterbacks in the league because the great heights that he is capable of reaching have not always been attainable for him, mostly due to his own mistakes. So far in the playoffs, he’s been able to avoid them. One more game will cap off the most important three-game run in his career where he’s been able to do one thing everyone has consistently been clamoring for him to do: just play clean!
Darnold has always been one of the more physically gifted quarterbacks in the league. I can say this from personal experience as someone who spent time covering him when he was a member of the New York Jets a few years ago. He often had practices where he looked like the best QB in the league. And then would follow those practices up with some of the sloppiest stuff you will ever see. There’s a reason why he’s on his fifth team and it’s not because of his general ability. It just hasn’t been clean enough.
Seattle hasn’t asked Darnold to do a high volume of passing through two playoff games, but he’s worked well with what he’s been asked to do. He’s thrown the ball 53 times for 470 yards, four touchdowns and nearly a 70% completion rate. He’s got a passer rating of 122.4 and the only real blemish has been the five sacks on such a small number of dropbacks. However, the most important number for Darnold: zero turnovers.
Darnold has fumbled once, but was able to recover it. That works in the one-game sample sizes of single-elimination playoffs. He needs to do it just one more time. That seems feasible considering what he’s done so far, but there is also the permanent aura of the unknown with Darnold where the bottom could fall out at any time. He has so much to gain from this if he can make it one more game without the intrusive thoughts popping in his head as he’s scanning the Patriots’ coverages.
Forging new destinies is the theme of Super Bowl LX
There are plenty of established figures in this game between the coaching staffs and the players who can begin to cement and individualize their legacies in this Super Bowl. This game has an extra weight added to it in terms of reputational benefit (or loss) with a win (or loss). With a victory, history and narratives can be forgiven, or forgotten. These are some of the most compelling storylines the Super Bowl generates and with two new(ish) teams in the Super Bowl, it feels like more is on the line than recent years.
Sam Darnold feels like the obvious, biggest benefactor with a Super Bowl win, as long as he plays cleanly. His career has been mired by puzzlingly bad play, especially considering he has great physical skills and is capable of stringing together great play. However, the ruts are real and they still show up occasionally even though Seattle has won in the rough moments. If Darnold can get through one more game without turning the ball over, paired with a win, he can rewrite the narrative on what people think about him. There’s no better time to cap off what could be the best three-game run of his career.
Josh McDaniels and Mike Vrabel can write new stories for themselves with a win, considering their previous stops did not end in the most flattering manners. While Vrabel bounced back from how his tenure in Tennessee ended, it’s not like it was completely nonsensical for Tennessee to move on from him. The Titans were stuck in the mud following two middling seasons and never really rebounded from the losses of wide receiver A.J. Brown and offensive coordinator Arthur Smith. Moving onto then-rookie quarterback Will Levis was not a fruitful endeavor and the Titans’ offense was so bad that the team decided to move in a different direction from Vrabel. That turned out to be a bad decision, considering Brian Callahan lasted only 23 games as head coach, but it was an understandable move at the time.
McDaniels’ firing from the Raiders requires less explanation; they were awful and so was he. However, he can begin to rebuild the narrative around his career if he can provide answers for the Patriots’ offense to survive a raucous, physical Seattle defense. McDaniels can prove to himself and everyone that he can reach the mountaintop of success without the titanic shadows of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady hovering over him.
Patriots quarterback Drake Maye and Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald are new enough here where they shouldn’t be dinged too much with a loss, but they can hit the ground running on their respective careers with a Super Bowl victory in each of their respective second seasons. History can be made and rewritten with a Lombardi Trophy — at least until there’s a shaky 2026 season that turns up the heat on the hot take machine and makes everyone forget, because that’s just what we do now.
Category: General Sports
