When you add up the 2025 NFL regular season and postseason, the 32 teams have combined to play 284 games. We’ve had 18 regular season Sundays, three weekends of playoff football, and it all comes down to this, the 285th game. It’s the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, for all the marbles!
These two teams have met in the postseason once before, back in early 2015, the culmination of the 2014 season. The game was in Phoenix, and thanks to a late interception by Malcolm Butler off of Russell Wilson, the Patriots held off the Seahawks for Tom Brady’s fourth Super Bowl ring.
The only remnants of those two teams from 2015 are the uniforms and the various players scattered throughout the media giving their biased opinions on the game. Well, all of them except for Brady himself are giving. biased opinions. Brady claims he just wants to see a good game. I’ll let you figure how that landed with Boston fans.
Back to the present, and we’ve got two teams that combined to win 28 games in the regular season, 14 apiece. These are two very good football teams, although New England’s 14 wins came against one of the easiest schedules in league history. These world thinks the Seahawks are going to win this thing, so let’s see what the most prominent storylines are:
4. Patriots pass protection issues
The Patriots operate with two rookies on the left side of the offensive line, with Will Campbell at left tackle and Jared Wilson at left guard. The two of them, particularly Campbell, have been something that’s required extra attention and help for Josh McDaniels, the Pats’ offensive coordinator. If you watched the Texans’ loss to the Patriots, you saw Will Anderson eat Campbell’s lunch. The Seahawks don’t get pressure in a similar fashion to the Texans, who ride their two elite edge rushers to big sack numbers. The Seahawks overwhelm you with bulk across the entire line. They were 10th in sacks this season. This could be another long day for Drake Maye.
3. Special teams
The return game has been very big, at times, in the playoffs. Hell, Rasheed Shahid, one of the best trade deadline pickups in recent memory, ran the opening kickoff back against the 49ers in the divisional round, and it was off to the races after that. Shahid for the Seahawks, and Marcus Jones for the Patriots, are two of the bets return guys in the sport. For the Seahawks, a few plays on special teams were the difference in their conference title win over the Rams.
2. Jaxon Smith-Njigba
If there is one player who can single handedly wreck this game, for either team, on either side of the ball, it’s Smith-Njigba, who led the league this season with nearly 1,800 receiving yards. In the conference title win over the Rams, Smith-Njigba had 7 catches in the first half, and finished the game with 10 catches for 153 yards. He was wide open all day, and that’s not by accident. Even when he’s not open, he’s strong enough to make contested, acrobatic plays in the passing game. There’s nobody like him on New England, on either side of the ball, and the Seahawks will undoubtedly feed him the ball plenty on Sunday. At +550, sprinkle a little on JSN for MVP.
- Messing with Darnold
The favorite for Super Bowl MVP is Darnold, which, on the one hand, makes sense because he is the quarterback for the favored team. On the other hand, it feels like nothing makes sense when it comes to this ascension for Sam Darnold, the same guy who was “seeing ghosts” (his words) in New York as a Jet a few years ago. With Klint Kubiak, son of Gary, as his OC, though, Darnold has realized his potential. The caveat for this game is Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel having two weeks to prepare, and design some disguised coverages that might really mess with Darnold. He’s become a much better protector of the football, but so had C.J. Stroud, and you saw what the Patriots’ defense did to him.
SPREAD: Seattle -4.5
PREDICTION: Seahawks 30, Patriots 17
This article appears in Private: Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2026.