Ben SolakFeb 4, 2026, 06:20 AM ETCloseBen Solak joined ESPN in 2024 as a national NFL analyst. He previously covered the NFL at The Ringer, Bleeding Green Nation and The Draft Network.Multiple Authors
play1:24Orlovsky: Maye will have to play best game of the season for Patriots to winAdam Schefter and Dan Orlovsky discuss Drake Maye’s minor shoulder injury and what he will need to do to win vs. Seattle.
Orlovsky: Maye will have to play best game of the season for Patriots to winAdam Schefter and Dan Orlovsky discuss Drake Maye’s minor shoulder injury and what he will need to do to win vs. Seattle.
Adam Schefter and Dan Orlovsky discuss Drake Maye’s minor shoulder injury and what he will need to do to win vs. Seattle.
Patriots CB Christian Gonzalez vs. Seahawks WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba
Patriots DT Milton Williams vs. Seahawks G Anthony Bradford
Patriots OC Josh McDaniels vs. Seahawks CB Devon Witherspoon
Patriots OT Will Campbell vs. Seahawks DE DeMarcus Lawrence
Of course, I don’t think you’d read “84 matchups that could define the Super Bowl.” So I whittled it down to five — the five heaviest feathers on the scale that will decide Seahawks-Patriots. And I even predicted which way that scale will tip at the bottom.
The list of cornerbacks in the NFL better than Gonzalez is as short as it is debatable. Pat Surtain II, Derek Stingley Jr., Quinyon Mitchell and Denzel Ward are the only four names I’d entertain — and none of them clear him comfortably. Only three corners had a better expected points added (EPA) on targets in man coverage than Gonzalez did this season; only five gave up fewer yards per target (4.7).
And while it’s hard to call Smith-Njigba the clear best receiver in football, when Puka Nacua, Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson are all equally capable of dominating any given Sunday, he did have the best season of that bunch. He finished with 119 catches, 1,793 yards and 10 touchdowns. And Smith-Njigba has only two games this season with fewer than 70 yards, including the playoffs — a 41-6 win over the 49ers and a 26-0 win over the Vikings. He simply wasn’t needed in either contest.
With that said, we can still turn to that Vikings game to investigate how coordinator Brian Flores — the league’s preeminent defensive mind save for Mike Macdonald — dealt with Smith-Njigba. Since Minnesota lacked a star corner like Gonzalez, Flores regularly got a safety on top of JSN, even when the Seahawks isolated him as the lone receiver in a 4×1 set.
When the Seahawks tried to hide Smith-Njigba in the slot — making it harder to press him and compress his routes into the sideline — the Vikings dropped zone defenders off the line of scrimmage and directly into windows of the quick-breaking routes on which JSN typically feasts. This forced Sam Darnold to hold the ball for an extra beat and created opportunities for the Vikings’ pass rush.
It’s important to note that while Smith-Njigba was primarily a slot receiver when he first joined the Seahawks, he is no longer limited. Across the regular season and playoffs, 24% of his routes and 20% of his targets have come from slot alignments. For context, Mike Evans and Justin Jefferson were in the slot more often. If the Patriots want to get Gonzalez matched up on Smith-Njigba, they won’t need to constantly travel him inside.
Smith-Njigba is completely different from London physically and stylistically. He wins in space and with quickness, and he is extremely tough to punch at the line. If Gonzalez is asked to play him off the line of scrimmage, or he is placed in press without a safety shaded to his side, he’s going to lose more reps to Smith-Njigba than the Patriots can afford.
To undress the Patriots’ defensive approach against their star receiver, expect to see Smith-Njigba sent in motion often in this game — doubly so on the first few series. If Gonzalez is shadowing him, the Seahawks will motion JSN into the slot to force nickel corner Marcus Jones to endure the one-on-one matchup. Jones is a great slot corner, but the Pats will need to dial up true double-teams to handle Smith-Njigba if he suddenly becomes a true slot receiver in this game.
The lean in this matchup goes to Smith-Njigba, who is on the sort of heater that doesn’t get stopped by any one mere mortal. The Patriots will pitch plenty of coverage changeups his way, but there’s only so much you can do on the chalkboard against an offense that uses a receiver like JSN so creatively — just ask the Rams, who failed to cover him on a corner route from the backfield in their loss to the Seahawks in the NFC Championship Game.
The bright spot for New England: Gonzalez can’t single-handedly erase Smith-Njigba, but if he can hold his own at the line of scrimmage, he can force Darnold to take longer dropbacks and target other receivers. That’d be a win for the Patriots’ defense as a whole.
The greatest weakness of the Seahawks’ offense from a personnel perspective is Bradford, the right guard. Over two postseason games, Bradford has given up a whopping 15.3% pressure rate, according to NFL Next Gen stats. In particular, the Rams exploited Bradford with blitzes, stunts and rushes straight up the middle.
During the regular season, Bradford recovered from a terrible first half and played better for much of the winter. He gave up seven quick pressures in the first six games of the season (bad), then only one over the next eight games (good). But he has now surrendered eight over the final six games (bad).
This is a particularly big deal against the Patriots. Only two players in the NFL have a pressure rate above 13% when rushing over the guard, and they just happen to be teammates: Williams and Christian Barmore, the defensive tackle duo for the Patriots.
More than any other, this matchup has the chance to completely turn this game on its head. And that’s true even beyond Bradford. First-year starting center Jalen Sundell and rookie left guard Grey Zabel have both played great ball, but this is the league’s most disruptive pass-rushing duo at defensive tackle.
But there is an inevitability to pass rushes. Every team has to drop back on third-and-long eventually. One of the key components of the Williams vs. Bradford matchup isn’t how often Williams will get pressure, but rather what will happen when he does.
The Seahawks, despite all of their tremendous team success, turn the ball over at an worryingly high rate. During the regular season, 14.1% of their drives ended with a turnover — only the Vikings gave the ball away at a higher rate. It isn’t impossible to win a Super Bowl at this rate — the 2023 Chiefs turned the ball over on 14.5% of their drives that season — but it’s extremely challenging.
Darnold is a turnover-prone quarterback. He has had the best season of his career, has improved dramatically and deserves all the flowers in the world. But he remains turnover prone. Next Gen Stats has him with a 7.2% turnover-worthy play rate when pressured — the worst rate for all starting quarterbacks this season — and he loses the ball both ways. He has six interceptions and five lost fumbles.
Conversely, the plan in the Patriots’ defensive line room is simple: We’ve seen Darnold panic under pressure before, and we can make him do it again. They just elicited the worst C.J. Stroud game I’ve ever seen in the divisional round with much of the same approach. Both by blitzing and by rushing four, the Patriots manufactured early pressures and feasted on an aggressive quarterback straining to make too many plays.
Here’s a great example: a thunderous hit from Rams safety Kamren Kinchens, who came in unblocked while Darnold’s back was turned on a play-action fake. This is a huge win for the Rams defense, but Darnold also did well to protect the football from what was essentially a blindside strike.
Two defenses have blitzed Darnold ambitiously in recent games — the Vikings in Week 13 (63% of dropbacks) and the Panthers in Week 17 (54.8% of dropbacks). These are also two of Darnold’s worst games this season. And on both films, you see similar DB blitzes that catch Darnold flatfooted after under-center play-action fakes.
There are two players in the league who have played at least 25% of their snaps at right cornerback, at least 25% of their snaps at left cornerback and at least 25% of their snaps at slot cornerback. Witherspoon is one of them (Amik Robertson is the other).
He also has been doing this since he entered the league. Since the 2023 season, Spoon has played over 40% of his snaps at wide corner and over 40% of his snaps at slot corner. He is one of only four players for whom this is true, and the other three are backups (Cameron Mitchell, Eli Ricks and DJ James).
When the Seahawks are in dime, Spoon will play over the slot. They like dime on clear passing downs (third-and-long) or against 11 personnel sets. Against heavier sets on all down-and-distances, Seattle prefers to play out of nickel, which will kick Witherspoon outside.
So where does McDaniels want him? Witherspoon is gettable in coverage, especially downfield, as the Rams showed with the 136 passing yards they put on him in the conference championship round. He is not big and is very aggressive downhill, so he can lose downfield leverage and struggle to reconnect to the catch point.
If the Patriots slide speed into the slot by fielding DeMario Douglas as their third receiver, they can take some shots downfield on Spoon. But Douglas is decisively not Puka Nacua or Davante Adams. Even if the theory is sound, Witherspoon might just win on talent alone.
Perhaps Kayshon Boutte is a better option. Over 30% of Boutte’s receptions this season have gone for 20-plus yards, fourth among all receivers. He is Maye’s primary downfield playmaker and has the size advantage on Witherspoon. But Boutte doesn’t really play the slot, which means Witherspoon would get to play him into the boundary, where he has been dominant this season (0.5 yards per coverage snap allowed, third best among all cornerbacks).
There’s also the matter of running the football. Witherspoon is the platonic ideal for willing run defense at defensive back. He slips blocks and takes them head on. He makes tackles with stopping power and pursuit plays into the boundary. He plays with toughness and alacrity.