While a majority of the NFL looks ahead to the NFL draft, players from the conference championship who are heading into NFL free agency, and the wild head coach carousel, the Seattle Seahawks prepare to host NFC West rivals, the Los Angeles Rams, in the NFC Championship game. With Mike McDaniel and QB Fernando Mendoza (likely) joining the AFC West this offseason, the West has a strong claim to running the NFL for years to come, starting with this weekend’s NFC title game.
Seattle returning to the top of the conference in HC Mike Macdonald’s second season, after moving on from Pete Carroll, who helped resurrect the team, is impressive. That QB Sam Darnold was able to overcome his NFL draft bust label to be a big part of the Seahawks’ quick ascent is a bigger surprise. While Seattle had the best defense in the NFL this year, by a decent margin, Darnold’s offense was a Top 10 unit as well.
While the Los Angeles offense gets most of the attention, the Rams defense has been a top five level group throughout the regular season as well. Byron Young, Jared Verse, and Kobie Turner create pressure at a high level at the line of scrimmage to help a talented but less famous group of defenders behind them.
With the teams having competed in multiple postseason games, for the championship round, we will be using FTN’s data for both the regular season and playoffs combined.
Los Angeles Rams vs Seattle Seahawks
Edge: Seahawks – Talk about an exciting matchup and, perhaps, “the real Super Bowl” for the 2025 NFL season. The first and second-ranked overall teams with the best offense versus the best defense facing off for the chance to head to the big game have all the makings of an all-time great matchup. FTN’s DVOA data shows a decent gap in Total DVOA between Seattle (45.1%) and Los Angeles (35.9%), but shows the gap between the two AFC West rivals and the rest of the league, with no other team having more than 22%. The betting odds, with the Seahawks listed at -2.5, agree with the analytics data.
DVOA provides another piece of information as you make betting decisions, discuss the playoffs with your coworkers, or while making daily fantasy decisions. We are excited to see the games played on the field and see whether or not FTN’s DVOA was able to predict who is headed to the Super Bowl this year.
