Super Bowl LX Recap: Seahawks Win!

Welcome back to the Meany Kime Show featuring Lenny. We did it. The season is over. A football game was won by the Seattle Seahawks. Juan feels like an understatement to describe what we just witnessed. Ben Solak, as he has been joining me all season long, is here to talk about this Super Bowl. We are live on YouTube. You might be listening to this the next day, but I'm seeing my comments and maybe I'll respond to some of them. So keep dropping them in as we go along. Ben and I are here to, of course, recap the game. We're waiting for Super Bowl MVP. So if somebody wants to break that to me as it happens, I'd love to react and find out. Ben, I'll just start by saying this. I've prepared very little thoughts. I mean, I was taking notes all game. it feels right and appropriate to me that this game went the way it did because it encapsulates this Seahawks team this Seahawks season to win with a defensive masterpiece a shutdown after this was the best team in football season long but most notably it was the best defense in the league it was a defense that in the second half of the regular season when the offense struggled and people forgot that after the nfc championship the defense held it together the defense won close games the defense won games when the offense tried to give it away mike mcdonald becomes the first defensive play caller in the history of the sport to win a super bowl a massive massive season for him instantly one of the best coaches if not the best coach in the end of whatever I'm being extreme uh but to me that's just regardless of what happens at MVP I do love that this ended that the the game was about the Seahawks defense because the Seahawks defense to me was the story of the 2025 NFL season and the true game-winning play is the Ochenna Nwosu pick six right that's the one that puts this thing to bed where you know for sure Seattle's going to win it and it is a defensive call right I mean like it's a great rush by spoon and it's a great play by Nwosu, but it is hurry up, no huddle. They have swapped the defensive line. They're switching personnel in and out and McDonald gets to a blitz call, which like this is one of their like, you know, like go to blitzes. It's like probably, you know, a short two word call, but still hard to do in that moment. So, you know what? While we're bringing guys on and off, let's communicate a blitz. Let's get it lined up and let's go. They get the free rusher. Nobody's hot for me because of course nobody's hot for me. They wouldn't. How are they blitzing in this situation? And then they get the hit. They get the fumble pick six, whatever you want to call it and then it's intercepted so not just a defensive master class but a defensive call encapsulated and distilled into one play that is the game winner house call ring ring ring with Cheninuo so ball game we're Super Bowl champions just like just a sick Mike McDonald game at the end of a sick Mike McDonald season so cool to see so validating to see the Seahawks only blitzed seven times in this game which is not insane obviously if you watched the Seahawks at all this season. This is not a blitz happy team. But insane. If you think back to how the game felt, it always felt like there was a free rusher or the Patriots had a miscommunication or let's be real. Will Campbell was getting cooked. We'll get to that. But the Patriots offensive line struggled so much with all of the various varied overload simulated pressures, the different things that Seattle was throwing at them up front that they didn't have to blitz. But when they did blitz, seven blitzes, six resulted in pressures. Drake May went three for six for 18 yards and an interception, the one you mentioned, against the blitz. Yeah, I think that's something. Devon Witherspoon, 14 games this season, 21 total pass rush snaps in this game, the 15th game, six pass rush snaps, including the final one. I mean, like all season long, it's been, man, they're really not rushing Spoon, and Spoon's the best blitzing corner league, but they don't really need to. He's been so good in coverage. They're not really doing it. And then in classic Super Bowl fashion, baby, we've been keeping this one tucked the whole season. And they started sending him two times on the first drive, got the big sack, and then the final play. I don't think Spoon is my MVP. I think it would be Kenneth Walker for me personally. Would it? Because this offense would be in a really bad way. He carried it. Yeah, without Kenneth. I'm not going to be mad. But if Spoon wins it, it'll be justified. Yeah, very much so. I think if it's a defensive player, it has to be Spoon. Derek Hall has a strong case, obviously, two sacks. himself, I thought, I mean, so many Seahawks defensive players. Eman Worry made amazing plays. Byron Murphy II, Nwosu. They were both so, which again, to go back to the theme. Derek Hall? Derek Hall, I mentioned him, yeah, the two sacks, was representative of who this team was all year long. This is not a defense led by a singular star, a dominant rusher. It's a defense where over the course of the regular season, six different players had over 30 pressures, which is the most of any team in the NFL. It was a defense without crazy super superstars, but many stars, and they all played together so well, which is another thing I want to talk about, the way the pass rush and the coverage worked together, the way they contained May, which was a massive part of this game. But to go back to your spoon point, because I thought he was magnificent in this. It was funny. I think, like, his first blitz, Collinsworth was like, here comes Debra Witherspoon. They love to blitz him. yeah that to me felt like one of those he got told i think it's one of those he got told in the production meeting that we're going to send spoon more right like a little why would they tell him that though i don't know collinsworth i feel of all the broadcasters always has something in like the first quarter of his games where he's like and this is something that's going to be big for them and then he's right like it happens over the course of the game uh and they like and like you know when when spoon had the sack they're the forced big six whatever he said in the broadcast he was like they've been running this splits all game and they weren't running like that precise splits but they had been bringing spoon all game and so to me like that was clearly something where they felt like we can get to this and they're not ready for this tendency wise not only was it the most times he had blitzed the entire season he hadn't blitzed in like five weeks like i pulled up his game log something we're talking about during the game and like that like talk about a tendency breaker this is again to me one of the genius aspects of mike mcdonald's play calling is the way every defensive game looks a little bit different the players are in slightly different positions the types of pressures they run the downs on which they send pressure or don't or send you know it is very different but yeah he was excellent um like the coverage too I mean look May was not good we're gonna get to that but in addition to uh the offensive line really struggling obviously against the CX defense and May himself being sped up by it and there were a few moments when guys were open, but for the most part, I thought the coverage was excellent. And I think more so than the coverage, Ben, what struck me in this was the tackling by the defensive backs. On the very first series, the Patriots broke a couple of tackles and I was like, ooh, that could be an issue, right? But because the pressure is either so good or May was so sped up, especially after Will Campbell started losing immediately and Josh McDaniels tried to, on early downs, just call some quick, easy completions, throws to the flats. But it felt like every single time they tried something easy, the Seahawks were in position to limit games. Josh Jobe. Josh Jobe. Who thinks about Josh Jobe? He was fantastic in this game. I came in saying like maybe your best matchup that you get is Kaysun Booty versus Josh Jobe on the outside. They went to it in the second half, that back shoulder ball, and Jobe just had Booty in jail, in the white paint, not even against the sideline, ineligible receiver, right? And that's where you bring up the point of like the little bit like this nameless defense, this deep defense is like, all right, you know, DeMarcus Lawrence, Derek Hall, Devon Witherspoon, they had their big plays, whatever. Jobe had a great play in this one. Ernest played very well in this one. Like you just have guys on guys on guys. So even when you like get a matchup that you think you want, you're still like barely got it to a 50-50. You only like only got it to a neutral. And then you're able to win those neutrals. I do think that your point like tackling wise, I was sitting there in the third quarter, just like, man, you would have thought by now that they could have gotten Drake a quick completion underneath that just creates after the catch and just like 10 yard game. Like why are they going to get an open swing route? And they finally got one to Ramondre Stevenson and they were like backed up there against the five. And it's like, dude, it took them two and a half quarters to just get like a check down with room. That's how suffocating coverage was in this game. I do want to get to Josh McDaniels and the coaching and how I felt like the Patriots were really outcoached in this one, both in terms of the coordinators, but also overall some of the decision-making by Rabel. But let's talk for a minute about both Will Campbell and Drake May because the Seahawks defense is the story of the game. Kenneth Walker is the story of the game, but obviously the Patriots offense completely laying an egg. I think you have to almost talk about them together because – so first of all, Campbell – I just asked for this. He gave up – have you looked this up, how many pressures he gave up? No, I have not. I'm not sure I want to hear it. Yeah, it's not great. 14 is what uh that's more than a quarter of the snaps he played in that's more than 13 man that's a lot of pressure good lord that's really rough the most any tia gave up was five which was zabel interestingly because it felt to me like bradford was getting cooked by milton williams but anyways um okay so the way i felt what i felt watching this was will campbell just lost immediately like on the let me go back to my notes at the very first drive in this game for some will campbell the other thing like okay this is dr mcdano's thing he left him alone a lot early in this game which i found absolutely befuddling on the very first drive uh it's like a just a four-man rush Derek Hall beats him immediately. And then there's another four-man rush. Eamon Worry chases down Drake May scrambling. And then on the third down of that drive, it's a cool pressure. It's like a simulated thing where Witherstein comes unblocked through the B gap and chases down May and forces an incompletion. But anyways, Campbell loses immediately. Second drive, Campbell loses. That's when Spoon has the blitz opposite him on the second drive for a sec. So, you know, this was like the most obvious thing of the entire postseason. I'm sure you guys, if you're watching this, if you're in a live Super Bowl recap, you've probably consumed a lot of NFL podcast material, and you're aware that Will Campbell is probably the number one thing literally every show on earth was talking about this week, and it was borne out. My feeling was that you could feel after, like almost immediately after that, may just being sped up and it felt like he was never comfortable from a pretty pretty early on in this game and it was like there was i want to go back and watch the pressures but seattle so often would like show a blitz from campbell's side and you could just feel him like oh it's gonna cut you he's gonna about to get beat and i think it led to not just some poor decisions especially later in the game obviously had some pretty big misses but like he just wasn't playing on time there was like no and i'm not saying guys were like wide open but there were moments where i'm like hit the check down hit the check down and it was like even though he had to do that to avoid pressure his entire process seemed completely off kilter very early in the game and he really struggled because of it i was disappointed he didn't run more i would have used i actually called more designed runs with him early on um yeah i was expecting more of that uh and like i was also like i i just also felt like they could have made some adjustments try to help with pressure early on the first deep ball completion of the game came out of six offensive linemen and they just like never called it they just like didn't call it again in the first half but i think may this was like a real learning lesson moment for him obviously difficult postseason against some very challenging defenses where he was like very rattled by pressure and then as the game went on he started pressing and then the decisions you know started getting worse yeah i uh so first if there's an MVP, Bucic know who it is. Is it Walker? It is Kenneth Walker. And I think correctly so. That's fine. That's totally, I'm not upset with that at all. Would it have been sick if it was Spoon or like, you know, a defensive player? Yes. We'll talk about Walker when we get to the other side of the ball because I do want to talk about him a lot. Like he had some really, really cool ones in this game. To May's point, May had a bad game. This was the worst game May's played all season. May fell into the trap that I feel a lot of young players fall into in the postseason and certainly in the Super Bowl, which is that they think that they can score 24 points on one play right May very clearly wanted to shoot the football for four quarters And I think to a degree that kind of what you have to be willing to do against Seattle You have to be willing to throw in a contested coverage and hit tight windows and be aggressive What Stafford does so well against them is Stafford just says, I'm ripping throws between zones, right? You guys are great at zone coverage, but I think I'm more accurate. I think I can throw the ball faster. Now, if you're going to do that, you have to rip it. You got to be willing to throw three picks. And May just did not want to actually let it rip. may drop back with the intentions of, all right, we're going to take some deep throws. And then he would think and he would look and he was just too slow, right? You got to make the decisions faster. You got to know the nature of your offensive line, especially if, as you say, they are not chipping. They are not max protecting. This was not a game where they went to a lot of six offensive line. This was not a game where they went to a lot of 21, 22 play action pass, which is what they typically do when they want to have these big max protect shots. And so you have to have an accelerated process. He wanted deep balls, but he refused to accelerate the process. It'll never work in the NFL. It certainly will not work against the Seattle Seahawks defense here in the Super Bowl. But once they were down, he was so clearly accelerated. Just like, ah, I got to do this, yeah. And so clearly pushing, right? Yeah, exactly. So young player spiraling in his head in the Super Bowl. Not the first time we've seen it. Certainly won't be the last time we've seen it. There is a rush to say, wow, this guy was second MVP voting. Oh, he's so bad. Oh, look at how terrible his postseason was. How could we have believed in this guy? Which to me, like, there's conversations to be had about the strength of schedule and about the postseason struggles. but to be immediately on may as like what a terrible may game is to just completely miss the point of how good the seahawks defense is right the seahawks defense walked out with two weeks of game plan and just just sat on every single window right there you'll be able to find a couple of plays going back and watching the broadcast on which may had an open receiver that he didn't get to the vast majority of the other the may sacks the negative may plays are plays where everything's clubbed up downfield you have to give that defense credit you cannot totally abdicate it they played an excellent i think it's because he just had a couple of like bad like really bad misses and i think um you know it's hard to see good coverage during a tv broadcast sometimes and some of the sacks were coverage sacks like the byron murphy sack was very much a coverage sack for example later in the game by the way i was wrong they only they did only have one jumbo play the entire game and it was a 21 yard 21 yard pass and may was actually well protected they only had six snaps out of either 22 or 21 which was something i thought they would go to a lot and they were very successful they were almost entirely in 11 personnel in this game i don't get it and they got and they got the dime snaps and the job snaps that apparently they were they would be hunting like to me if you're a heavy 11 personnel it's because you're trying to get job on the field but the theory behind that is we can supercomputer you right like i said it on it was it was a social clip process i said like you get to 11 you try to get booty backside and if they give help to joe by the backside then you go you know three against five on the front side and you ask me at a supercomputer and your supercomputer was just broke whole game right never walked out never in rhythm was never making fast decisions was not accurate with the football when he was making timely decisions on the short intermediate throws and then obviously like when he got into push push mode bang bang we get a two-play drive to mac hollins touchdown right the guy has a great arm but then we come back on the next drive and i think he was half deciding between throwing the over to Stefan Diggs to like moving from the left to the right or coming back throwing the backside dig moving from the right to left. And he kind of split the child a little bit. And that's why the ball sailed to love, but just like the, the pristine operation that typified May season this year was totally absent. So you can't be a five out team anymore. Can't be a spread and shred. Yes. Right. Why are you asking your quarterback to fire hose? Yeah. I really did not think Josh McDaniels was at his best in this. The other thing, like they took forever. So, okay, he didn't want to use Trevion Henderson because Stevenson is a better pass protector and he had been more efficient in the playoffs and he gives him some versatility. But also, at the end, when the tosses to Henderson started popping a little bit, maybe get that guy the ball in space earlier as an outlet. Maybe that's a way to pick up some six, seven-yard completions. They didn't run the ball well in this game, obviously. let's see i'm sure it's like three yep stevenson 3.3 yards per carry henderson 3.2 the pitches worked um and before we got to garbage time both of them had negative rushing yards under expectation right so you're already struggling to block up seattle because it's seattle and then also your backs are taking yards off the plate was the story of the seahawks defense all season long they were the best run defense in football and they were able to do so i mean i know i'm a broken record if you guys watch this show you've heard us talk about this a million times but the way we will remember this seax defense was that their ability to defend the run without ever putting three linebackers on the field and that was the case in this game one snap of base this entire it probably was like at the end of the game and the fact that their defensive backs are unbelievable tacklers. Even Worry. It's the best run defense from light boxes since 2020 Rams, which is the Brandon Staley Rams. That was the gap in half Aaron Donald. The reason they can do it is because their defense backs can tackle. Spoon and Nick and Worry are linebackers. One of them is built like a linebacker. The other one is spiritually a linebacker and also like a feral hog. And Spoon is one of these. He had like that one playing coverage. who was it on? Like a tight end or something? I don't know. Yeah, this Seahawks defense was something special. And they're going to be special for a while, man. Like, not many free... This is the team. I mean, we'll see what happens with Wollin. But who, you know, gave up one play in the Hollins. Drake was awful. And then he had like one drive where he just blacked out and threw like two unbelievable throws. And you wanted him to black out more. but then when you black out you throw the pick yeah it's like yeah it was no coincidence he hit like a dig between 20 guys and then he like went back to it and got picked um yeah they were just they were tremendous I don't know it is hard to it is at one point in this game when I was like spying a walker but I was like if you had to give it to a defensive player it would be very difficult to choose between three or four of these guys I would have picked spoon of the defense because he was so impactful in this game but they were all exceptional and shout out to mike mcdonald shout out john schneider too for putting together this defense combination of incredible draft picks but also some undrafted players some trades some free agent signings ernest jones very good in this game as well i thought um yeah i mean like this was special play by the cx special game of the cx defense a learning experience for drake may who had a very challenging postseason i guess before we're gonna take a break and get to the other side of the ball but i i want to ask you this like so the patriots offense after being arguably like statistically one of the best if not the best offenses in football all season long at least certainly in the past game kind of womp womped in the postseason what is if you're a patriots fan what is the learning lesson for the offense that you've gleaned from these difficult performances in the postseason spinning it forward in terms of like adjustments or players they need to add or upgrades so i think obviously left side of the line was a rookie left tackle and a rookie left guard and you have to ask yourself just how invested are we in the development of these two players relative to short-term fixes for these two players right i think a lot of people hit you know will camp with okay he's very clearly a guard and i think that his career would probably go better at guard and a tackle he struggled so much with length in this game the demarcus lawrence rush on him like good god the Derek Hall rush. Like it's such, it's so evidently a problem. And so you can, I think go for like, you know, Campbell into left guard, then you have a left tackle need. And like, yes, it's not, it's a pretty solid free agent class for tackles, but like nobody's out here trying to need a left tackle. That's not a good spot. Wide receiver is clearly, clearly, clearly, clearly a spot where they have to get better. They had a good room in terms of depth this year, but in terms of dynamic talent, you know, separating players, game changing players, nobody was evident. One of the things that drove me nuts was during the game, people were like, wow, Stafford is clearly the MVP. over May because Stafford is ripping this defense up and May isn't. And while that's absolutely true, Stafford just lights out against this defense. It was one of the best point-in-case arguments for his MVP win. He has Puka Nuku and Devontae Adams. It was a dramatic, dramatic... Look at Puka Nuku in those two games, man. It's a dramatic difference in the sort of weapons that we have available. And so, a star receiver, like a big trade for the disgruntled AJ Brown or an equivalent is absolutely something that should be in the Patriots cards. My thing on May is like... I don't know. May absolutely is going to have a worse season next year than he did this year because he was near MVP status this year. Like that's just regression. That's how it happens. He's going to play a harder schedule. May was may had the 10th best rookie quarterback season in the last century, like since the two thousands by success rate last year. Like anybody saying that May's year two was fully the product of his schedule and that he's like, you know, a total paper tiger, I think completely missed the 2024 season. We are, we can be very, very confident. This is a very, very good quarterback who also had a really, really bad postseason. Yeah, I think that's fair. I'd really like to see them get better at running the football next year and I don't think it was about the backs per se I think a lot of it had to do with the offensive line I thought was maybe a little bit more up and down than portrayed during the season and then I think defenses just didn't fear the passing game and I think that was off the top of my head they faced very few light boxes but a little bit they did But I think to your point, fixing, adding some playmakers on offense will probably help the run game as well. But yeah, you know, obviously very tough Super Bowl for May, very tough postseason. But I echo your sentiments. I think, you know, obviously it's year two rookie season. And folks need to remember, like coming into this, none of us thought the skill players were good enough. And then it was like they dramatically exceeded expectations. Right. But this was not seen. Didn't even need JSN in this game, man. did not even need him take a breather jsa enjoy the gatorade that seems like a good moment to transition to the seahawks so let's do that so it's a funny one to talk about the seahawks offense because you're not that much to talk about in some way like there is but i mean the defense was so much the story of the game which is why i felt thought it was important we started with this one it was really interesting early on because the patriots defense uh Did some really interesting stuff early in this game. I think when it, you know, like in terms of, they answered some of the questions we had. Gonzalez was very much covering JSN. They played a lot of men. I think I texted you. I was like, all-man coverage on the first drive. It felt like all-man coverage, first two drives. You hit me back. We talked about how they would match the Seahawks' 12 personnel. They played a lot of base, which we discussed. And the Seahawks were actually, in a way, that was not at all representative of their season, unable to create explosives against that base defense, largely because of pressure, Ben, right? Like we talked about the Seahawks on the pressure they got, but Darnold in this game, 50, no, that was May, sorry. Darnold's game still very high, 43% pressure rate. He actually finished with, I think, a 50% completion percentage, unless I'm wrong. It was not very high, but. Yeah, 19 completions, 38 attempts for Darnold. 5.3 yards per attempt, which is his worst game of the season, save for the Minnesota Vikings game. 34.1% offensive success rate when throwing the football. Worst game of the season, regular or postseason for the Seahawks offense. Patriots defense did their job, baby. They really did. They were really, really good at the beginning of this game. Throughout the game, I thought, despite being put in bad field position, they made plays. There was a couple, you know, key moments. The Barner touchdown, which is a cool design, and also just kind of the very similar things we've seen from them all season long. But this was not the bombs away Seahawks offense from the NFC Championship or the first half of the season. It was a Seahawks offense that I thought was much more in line with what we saw before the NFC Championship game. Kind of like similar to what we saw, I guess, against both games against the Niners almost, where Darnold avoided crucial mistakes. It felt like earlier on he was going to get picked because the Patriots were playing everything so tight. I was so positive. Darnold, he was like just getting the ball out before he was getting hit. The ball was behind on the throws. I was like, man. He was behind on a lot of throws tonight, including several of the Christian Gonzalez pass breakups. I thought he was behind on what could have been a touchdown throw, one of the Gonzalez PBUs, another one. There was an out against like Palms coverage where the corner almost jumped it. So I was a little bit nervous but they didn he didn give them the football you know through hook or crook and then he didn fumble it And he also didn he only took one sack And I think if I had to pinpoint, like what was the biggest difference between him and May, and there's a lot of things, I think, and Collinsworth did hit this a fair amount during the game, he handled pressure a lot better than Drake May did in this game, which, you know, let's give some credit to Sam Darnold. His calling card, the thing that he has gotten the most heat for over the course of his NFL career is if you pressure him, he not only turns into a pumpkin, he panics, he does, you know, wildly bad things, and that happened at times during the regular season, not long ago. But, Ben, in this game, like I said, 43% pressure rate, just one sack. there were multiple times too where Milton Williams just came barreling through the a gap given he I can't believe it says he only had two pressures on Anthony Bradford that doesn't feel accurate whatever and Darnold like did a fantastic job of sidestepping pressure sometimes he made plays sometimes he didn't but he didn't put the football on the ground he didn't take many he didn't take sacks he didn't create negative plays and so while I'm not going to sit here and tell you this was like a you know career altering performance he defied the thing that had been used against him or at least the single biggest criticism against him of him his entire football career I do think he shed like reputationally in this game 16 pressure drop backs one sack no turnovers not even like it's all you need to do you know not even like ball fumbled but we picked it up and like well i certainly like you know gonzalez got like a hand like you know a hand and a half on that one jsn throwing at the goal line no like oh clear easy drop interceptions right this was an honorable negative erasing game right the way you brought up the way he played against interior pressure i thought he was so smooth and and and i thought he played with the awareness of the fact that his clock was going to get accelerated and he would have to work around in a way that may fail to right and that's your veteran maturity it's understanding all right i'm going to walk into this game knowing five eight of my reps are going to be chalked there's gonna be no hero plays on it's gonna be no big plays it's just gonna be about surviving for the next down in a way that may was never comfortable doing and donald was very comfortable doing the uh uh the down-to-down success rate the consistency was not there right i mean this was their worst offensive game by success rate but the explosive rate right they had seven explosive games right kenneth walker on the runs they had a uh you know a big like you know 19 yard pass to shaheed they had the touchdown on the barn or that's what seattle's been in their bad games this season is like hey down and down we're not good we're going three now but our defense keeps us in the field position battle and then eventually we've got a big play either by design or by one of our explosive athletes right one of the big reasons why to me kenneth walker was the mvp is because of the explosive runs he was creating or just keeping them on schedule he was going he was getting big chunks and so yeah you can survive having a bad success rate game a bad down to down game where they're getting pressure on you and they're forcing you to third along you're forcing punts if you don't turn over the football so you don't lose field position and you hit on your explosives and and that is exactly the path that they followed as they followed like again in their bad games this year the wikings and the panthers that's exactly how they did it and they followed it to a win understanding the script man mike mcdonald good coach kenneth walker had five explosive runs in this game that's a lot of explosive runs man he joins this is from our researcher matt willis because I was asking for some stuff on this. He joins a company of three running backs of all time who have multiple 25-yard, I know it's like a little specific, whatever, runs in a Super Bowl. The other two are Marcus Allen and Timmy Smith. Yeah, I do think he was a worthy MVP. He kept, yeah, like to your point, in a game where the passing game was pretty inefficient, he was the most reliable thing they had going. even though Chris Collinsworth said he's not a good receiver, which made me mad. I actually thought that Clint Kubiak should have gone to him more through the passing game, especially with all the base defense that New England was playing. And when they finally hit him for a screen, I was like, thank you for a big gain at one point. And they had two more screens that I think got eaten, right? Where Donald threw it away on one. I think another one, he even like dirtied it even faster. Like Patriots were ready for him. Well, the Patriots were doing something that I'm kind of disappointed myself for not talking about this more. They were blitzing the Seahawks play action a lot. the all that like i think majority of the seahawks under center play action if it felt like sam had a pass pressure in his face uh he often did and they were also covering up his outlet you know when sam does those boots the seahawks usually give him like a flood concept or say you know whatever and they were doing a fantastic job of predicting what he wanted to do i thought they would have i thought klin kubiak as he has sometimes done would have hit them like a throwback screen you know like to take advantage of that aggression i didn't feel like you know they really had that many good answers against the patriot splits but as the game went on they came up with more and more of them sacker was excellent in this one like we're talking about the coaching discrepancies the assistant coach of the year and coach of the year i have some issues with the defensive coordinator i thought was quite good um but yeah walker was and like let's take a moment to just kind of celebrate what he's done this season because he's been on an absolute heater since Zach Charbonnet went down with an injury they were using them in a pure rotation much to the frustration of fantasy owners everywhere and uh he completely turned it on he had several gigantic performances as a receiver as well in the postseason by the way um I just love watching him run let me get like i just there was i think it was the one near the end of the game where he made the little cut or no it was the one where he was doing the levion thing behind the line yeah a little tap tap tap tap you know ngs had that great stat which was i think was like he's spent the most time behind the line of scrimmage of any quarterback in like eight years before he crosses it yeah which he does like sometimes derogatory yeah because sometimes you're like brother go some of that is scheme because they run so many stretch runs right so it naturally takes him a lot longer to get to the lightest scrimmage but the combination of just like the patience the vision the burst the acceleration he's just really fun to watch and it's a contract year for him so it'll be interesting to see what happens wild that jsn got hurt and it like didn't matter i mean outside of cooper cup was leading receiver which is crazy i guess like a lot of that happened at the end of the game felt like barner had his customary wide open touchdown that was a cool concept the the red zone little little scissors in the red zone insert off the motion clink kubiak doesn't just scheme it up great in the red zone he does all the things like the nerds love talking about and he knows he'll get clipped it's good pr man releasing him through the tight insert corner you know um yeah so you know but it's really like the the seahawks passing game was just not at all the story of this game for me and like you know like i darnold was fine i mean like the best thing he did was protect the football quite frankly because he did miss some throws and he missed like the go ball to shaheed he missed uh a few but but you know it didn't matter because field position and uh and and the run game was what it was so yeah and when we zoom it out and when we zoom it out like one of the things that not only allowed the seahawks to make the quarterback move they did because even if it like still was geno smith and not sam donald like you know who knows all the different strands of history one of the things that allowed them to be more so in like the c tier the mid tier of quarterback options was the fact that hey like we have a defense that it's not just like you know can take over games for us whatever can truly like dominate games in terms of script and in terms of field position such that we can have these games where just it's just don't don't turn the football over right and that's you saw a lot of that from denver this season and then houston that season and well don't turn the football over then all of a sudden And Stroud has a bad turnover game. And you see the way that falls apart. And so there's a difference between like very good defense. Think like Eagles level, Chargers level. And then like elite defense in terms of the scripts that it allows you to play on. The way it allows you to call plays and think about your offense, right? Like there was a lot of meat left on the bone in the past. The game, big Shahid vertical. The JSN or the Shahid pass breakup, Christian Gonzalez, where that ball was a little bit behind. The JSN throw in the end zone where that ball was certainly behind. Like there were missed throws by Sam in high leverage situations for a lot of yards. but you have such a wide margin when you have a defense of this caliber and that's where like you know the Seahawks beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl without question had this been the Broncos or the Texans or the Chargers or the Bills man like the Seahawks were just steamrolling cats and it's because this sort of a defense puts you in a game state that 31 other teams are just not comfortable playing I should say 30 really because the Rams you know figured out how to get through it but 31 other teams are just like not comfortable dealing with this state I don't understand how the rams were so good against the seahawks and then like against like the falcons and the panthers right well that's the thing is like we saw the right we saw like this this last rams game the nfc championship game and then we see this terrible patriots performance everybody's like oh my gosh you know drake may off the line of patriots so terrible it's all the schedule lest we forget the 49ers we also got to see play two games against the seahawks defense and just get deleted and then they were fine against everybody else like this was not like They're more than fine against everybody else. The Diners had like a top five offense against everybody else who wasn't Seattle. The Seahawks had exactly one issue this year, and it was not even the Rams. It was the Rams in games two and three. Game one, they kicked the Rams' tail. It was just weird two games, but there happened to be two games that everybody watched. Exactly. And so I think our perspective on how achievable dynamic offense is against the Seahawks defense is dramatically warped by the game we watched two weeks ago. With that said, good God, the Patriots were bad on offense. They made a lot of mistakes. and errors that they could have had an easier game and they could have had a better script and so on and so forth but anything taking credit away from the seahawks defense i have no interest in hearing i know if stafford was as good against the seahawks as it was against like seven other like every other defense in the nfl it would have been like one of the best seasons in nfl it was just like weirdly amazing against this particular team but yeah for the most part this listen this is the best defense in football all season long that again and for those who are joining now by the way uh that's what we talked about the first half of this podcast if you're wondering why we've been talking more about the seahawks offense we started by talking about the seahawks defensive dominance and everything that happened there um i want to talk about the coaching now because i've been kind of snidely alluding to it with my coach of the year you gotta snidely allude you gotta snidely allude so we click we criticized josh mcdaniels who i so you know Again, we talked about in the first half, for those who missed, just some, I thought, puzzling choices in this game. Obviously, the quarterback and the left tackle were, you know, significant problems, but I think he didn't help. Mike Vrabel, also some very puzzling coaching decisions. Mike Vrabel, Mike situational football Vrabel. Okay, so like off the top of my head, there was one very egregious fourth down, I thought it was like a fourth and one somewhere between the forties where this was before the game got out. I mean, it was like 12 to zero. I could not believe he punted in that situation. Near the end of the drive. No, or the end of the first half. I think it was didn't call it timeouts, just complete give up situation. Let it roll. They were down when they were down 19 to seven. Didn't go for it to go for two. Pardon me. which if you had gone for two would have been an 11 point game so technically it's a you know you can get a uh if you get a three first time the game yeah there's no benefit to being 12 points right it's two touchdowns you guys score two downs if you miss you guys who are two touchdowns there's zero benefit pretty weird i thought like i i you know uh just am i missing those are three things that come to my mind immediately where i was like what just a little bit perplexed yeah so There were no decisions on the NGS model on which the Patriots had an extremely clear go for it, save for the fourth and one on their 41-yard line in the third quarter. That's the one where it's like, okay, listen, all of our win probabilities are going to be below 10%. We are chasing very thin outcomes here. It's time to be aggressive. They did not go for that. They punted. Otherwise, it's all toss-ups, but you would have anticipated by the time we were getting you know middle of the second end of the second quarter early third quarter that we'd be willing to crank the aggressiveness up a little bit more and so like okay by the book egregious not necessarily within the context of like how bad you were on offense you'd really like just trying together a couple drives give your defense a break so on and so forth the two-point conversion buddy like that was yeah modeling the the modeling doesn catch it great because it still very low win probability either way so the like models don think that it necessary but from a heuristic perspective it obviously clearly necessary to go for it because it it opens a door to a tie in an overtime outcome that doesn't exist otherwise and there's legitimately no drawback for not going for it so like uh you can't like if variables like oh you know our decision tree like that's what it said to do sure but this is one where you can just look at the scoreboard and you can figure it out pretty easily that was fourth quarter 12 33 left like come on you know like that yeah you're expecting maybe three drives left more likely to so crazily enough the seahawks only scored one touchdown this game just going back and looking at that when that happened um yeah just again like you know he's obviously a great coach great season i get why people voted from coach of the year mike mcdonald was my choice um and i'm not going to apply the same standard like it would be incredibly hypocritical of me to say this and then like you know discount the the Maeve Stratford thing regular season award this does Super Bowl doesn't matter for Mike Mayles coach of your choice just like whatever yeah but that you know we're just talking about this game right now and like I thought there were just some bad decisions by the Patriots coaching staff overall and I guess you know like that kind of brings me to the next thing about the Seahawks which is they're gonna lose remember their coaching staff the offensive coordinator clint kubiak there's been very little um smoke around who they're going to replace him with part of the difficulty of losing uh making the super bowl and losing coaches and the eagles know this all too well as it affects your choice of replacements right because a lot of them are mike mcdonald's not mike daniel's not walking through that door maybe he'll change his mind i don't know um but yeah it's things you know kenneth walker's a free agent rick woolen's a free agent so let's go here do you think the seahawks team is in position to run a bag yes uh kenneth walker boyamafe reek wallen like there's legitimate free agents but they have the fourth most capsules right now in the nfl they're going to be able to make moves they could create more as well if they wanted to uh they're like defensively the cool thing about really good like offense is well i say when you have really good offense it is easier for teams to spend some time in the offseason figuring out a good way to stop that offense it's actually harder to do that for really good defense because the whole point of good defense is that it's malleable it changes relative to the opponent so it's hard to be like all right you know we'll key in on this one thing like no they're going to be hiding that one thing against exactly you uh and so i i would expect them to be once again extremely good defense next year it's fair to say that they ran pure on offense in some key games this year specifically thinking about some of these these ramps performances they had a great sam game in the championship game and obviously the week 16 game everybody has this you know well covered how absurd that comeback was but also like sam had a remarkably above average turnover worthy play rate this season you could get the exact same sam season next year regressed down on the turnover numbers and expect to be largely about as good you know in the passing game i will say if they get the exact same season next year at jsn they got this year i will be stunned that seems extremely hard to do no matter how talented you are like this was a bonkers preposterous season so it'd be nice to feel a little bit better about wide receiver too whether they keep shaheed who's also a free agent obviously i don't think cups gonna like suddenly become that at 32 33 and so secondary pass catchers feels like a spot that could end up mattering a lot more next year because jsa just carried so much weight this season but overall yeah seattle's primed absolutely be another nfc contender next year as we very well know that might mean they're the five seed because they lose to the rams in the division and then they lose in the first round playoffs on the bye you know it doesn't guarantee anything but this is gonna be a good team for a little bit yeah the ramps are going to be good next year too so i think you know i mean it just felt like all season long those were the two best teams and not all season long but i would say at the half point in the season was when a consensus started forming and i know you and i talked about a lot this felt like those are the two best teams of football and as we wrapped the season that felt like the super bowl right i think we said that at the time it was it was very reminiscent of the um the last super bowl quite frankly when the nfc championship against san francisco felt like the real super Bowl and then they crushed Denver as you remember and I wouldn't be surprised if we get stories coming out of this game um where like after that Super Bowl Super 48 the Super Bowl uh all the stories that came out after were like yeah the Seahawks I think I actually myself talked to Cam Chancellor about that they're like we knew we were gonna kick their butts like we knew it wasn't gonna be close and I wouldn't be surprised if as things come out you know after this one we we hear similar stories from this defense of how they like watch the postseason and they felt like pretty confident that they were gonna they were gonna do it again but yeah um or they're gonna and deservedly so dude deservedly so yeah what a defense defense is back i know everyone's like oh that game sucked oh it's so boring sorry i don't know i like i i as somebody who like as everybody knows like was a big jerk fan coming out of unc i've been a big jerk fan fan since he started in the league there's something extremely fun about watching a really good quarterback just get put in the walls of jericho dude like i like i remember the first few games like mahomes was really struggling last year where it was like dude like i thought this guy was immortal and that bullets would bounce off him and it just doesn't happen anymore right there's any there's a great intensity a great seriousness to win defensive strike back against like really good elite quarterbacks elite offenses which i know may is not in that rarefied air just yet but like i i i enjoy those moments in which unsolvable puzzles feel like they're getting solved this is what Mike McDonald does it's what he went I mean I know I started to keep hard being the 49ers but never I'll never forget and obviously this was a big part of why as you remember I was so thrilled with this this was he was who I wanted Seattle to hire I was so like just please Mike McDonald you know and I'll never forget the it was either the Christmas or close to Christmas game against a Niners offense that until they played Baltimore Ben you remember that year looks like a freaking wagon in this Ravens defense under Mike McDonald went up against San Francisco and just humbled them and four picks in that game and unfortunately for San Francisco like they've had the same result now against the Seattle defense and I think Brock Purdy is a good quarterback I'm not like low on him to your point but this is just that type of unit they're just really special they've made some really good defenses some really good offenses look extremely mediocre going back to last season but certainly this year and I know everybody's wants to talk about and then the schedule talk is fair and all of that but this was not a bad Patriots offense at all during the regular season it's very good actually and they played well against good defenses and Seattle's just different man they're just I'm just looking at the Seattle schedule i mean yeah they just they just crush teams so shout out to mike mcdonald what a season what a coach thank you to everybody who's joined us sorry i didn't really get to any questions we've been just like talking i asked people if they have questions and the only thing that people are talking about is your bet with your brother about getting a new tattoo that's the only question that was that we didn't do a new a new tattoo uh i think i'm good i'm like too old to get new tattoos I only have like room on this arm this one hurt too by the way I have a few yeah this one really hurt yeah I mean maybe I'm like a baby but the issue is if you get a second one you go same bicep or other bicep I would add it to this arm I have one here and I've always kind of wanted like more of a sleeve situation at some point we just said McDonald's can be you know continuing to do this at some point you're just got various Roman numerals and odd angles across your arms and it's gonna go less hardcore and more very very weird looking the real question is what would it take for ben to get a tattoo can we make a tattoo packed right here you could pick something that would never happen like a very obscure thing so that we and the listeners can root for it forever okay so two years ago reading the comment commenters drop some suggestions please i'm looking right now two years ago eagles in the super bowl which by the way this podcast is is the outgoing champs and the incoming champs right now okay award-winning munichimes podcast lombardi trophies in the case you want your team eagles win it yeah eagles win it last year seahawks win it this year i guess if jalen hurts wins the super bowl for the seattle seahawks i will get at that too of that exact thing that way the two worlds come together and collide there you go there's my absurd thing that will never happen unless the seahawks play the eagles and jalen hurts no i was gonna say jalen hurts turns the football over and thus wins it for the seahawks seahawks eagles super bowl might be really tough given the way the conferences are currently aligned but i like where your head's at um you know things can change uh yeah anyways thank you to everybody who tuned in mostly nice comments some pretty funny ones um and thank you of course to ben for joining us all season long doing such a great job joining me uh last week and this week as well are you wearing a super Bowl sweatshirt, by the way? I am. I'm wearing my Super Bowl hoodie that I got. And I realized after my family went to bed, the girls went to bed, that all of my nice clothes that I usually wear for the podcast were in a bedroom with a sleeping baby and a sleeping mom. And I did the cost benefit on going up and sneaking there and getting dressed. And I was like, no, I'm doing the Super Bowl pod in a hoodie. And I feel poor about that. I wanted to be dressed to the nines to attend the Mina Kimes celebration. And instead, I'm hooded up. Well, Ben, you're the gold standard. honestly thank you so much for all the work you've done this season incredible incredible job this has been really fun our second year covering this league together so thank you everybody say something say something nice about ben in the comments i'm like that meme where the tiktok person stands in front of their say something nice you know my boyfriend's gonna show you something um don't don't tell him he looks like ben shapiro and uh can i ask i have one mina kai'm seahawks fan related question i'm curious about because going back to that eagles super bowl when they hit the davante throw the dagger that's when i knew was there a moment when did you when did you know when were you like let me look at my notes that's a great question it was pretty early i'm not gonna lie because there's that right well that's the thing is that like sometimes like for me like against the chiefs they were up whatever 26 to nothing and i was like they could still lose this you know like i was terrified the whole time that game i felt like the you could feel the noose kind of the whole way you can feel that the air coming out of it so i'm curious for you when were you're like this is gonna sound this is gonna sound so disrespectful it was the second patriots drive when that's described that's so that's reprehensible that's horrible uh it was even after the booty throw but it was when um and after job on second down had the tackle i think that was third when the witherspoon i think that was probably his first blitz of the game uh from will campbell's side when he sacked drake may i thought oh they got on like well i hate to say this but i was like there's nothing will campbell can do in this game they're just they've literally drawn a giant circle around him and it's just going to be hell and unless highlighting a play that happened on the paint on the seahawks side of the 50 as i knew this is when the score was three to nothing that's ballsy i also just again him calling the blitz he hadn't been blitzing witherspoon on that side going after campbell i was like oh my mike mcdonald has literally we need a new meme because kashanna has the microscope on linebackers we need a mike mcdonald equivalent for offensive linemen where he's just like circling them with a giant red sharpie but yeah i i thought this offense is gonna i was worried about sam turning it over at various points during the game and honestly he did come close a few times but avoided it but that that i thought this offense i just don't think this offensive line has it in this one and the cx defense you know they're playing too well so well that listen if 56 minutes of game clock you knew the cx were winning the game that's an enjoyable watch so congratulations to you on a nice carefree Super Bowl that's a blast I was relaxed uh thank you as always but also to the folks at Omaha Productions who make the show they are amazing Kirsten Sebecky who was not able to join us for the Super Bowl because transportation system is a problem but we love her uh Owen Saylor Tucker Tashin Jack Foster you guys are the best this is going to be it for this me this week I'm going to take the rest of you got this is the only podcast I'm doing this week congrats but the NFL never sleeps y'all draft season is upon us I am going to do this go to Disneyland tomorrow and then you know what I'm doing on Tuesday what are we doing watching Fernando Mendoza baby see y'all on the other side gross I've already watched him Too late!