play0:41Herm Edwards: The Seahawks’ defensive front took over the gameHerm Edwards says Seattle’s defensive front was too much for the Patriots to handle.
play2:04Sam Acho: Kenneth Walker ‘controlled’ the gameSam Acho explains how Kenneth Walker III won Super Bowl LX MVP for the Seahawks.
play0:50Sam Darnold calls Seahawks ‘special’ after Super Bowl winSeahawks QB Sam Darnold discusses offensive balance as a key to Seattle’s success.
Herm Edwards: The Seahawks’ defensive front took over the gameHerm Edwards says Seattle’s defensive front was too much for the Patriots to handle.
Sam Acho: Kenneth Walker ‘controlled’ the gameSam Acho explains how Kenneth Walker III won Super Bowl LX MVP for the Seahawks.
Sam Darnold calls Seahawks ‘special’ after Super Bowl winSeahawks QB Sam Darnold discusses offensive balance as a key to Seattle’s success.
Just when Maye thought he had the answers, Seattle coach Mike Macdonald changed the questions. The Seahawks brought a devastating wrinkle into their defensive game plan. And while Seattle probably would have been good enough to win the game without it, the unexpected look saved for the biggest game of the year tormented the Patriots, producing chaotic moments for New England’s offense before topping things off with a defensive touchdown.
A more experienced quarterback or one with better protection might have had the time and wherewithal to adapt quickly. Maye did not, and the Patriots were flummoxed by something the Seahawks hadn’t shown on tape in nearly two months. The end result: Seahawks 29, Patriots 13. Let’s make sense of what happened in Super Bowl LX.
To get there, Macdonald broke with an established tendency and showed the Patriots something they either weren’t expecting or severely underestimated. During the regular season, the Seahawks blitzed only 20.7% of the time, the fifth-lowest rate in the NFL. On Sunday, that number actually dropped to 15.1% — but it was heavily split by half. Macdonald blitzed Maye 33.3% of the time in the first half before dialing it back and sending extra rushers just 8% of the time after the break.
In the Super Bowl, though, Witherspoon rushed Maye seven times, with one being wiped out by an offside penalty on a teammate. His other six pass-rush snaps produced one sack and what was really a strip-sack on a second, only for the ball to stay in the air as it flew into the hands of Uchenna Nwosu for what went down as a pick-six. Those pressures didn’t singlehandedly win Seattle the game, but they created big plays and seemingly got into Maye’s head for the entirety of the contest.
Let’s start with the first Witherspoon blitz of the game. The Patriots were facing a third-and-9 in the first quarter from the Seattle 44-yard line. Even a few yards here might put the Pats in position to attempt a long field goal. Macdonald was incentivized to produce a negative play or an outright stop to force a punt, and the Seattle coach dialed up one of the more exotic pressures the Seahawks have shown all season:
Witherspoon would get his sack on the next possession. Facing third-and-15, the Patriots know that the left side of their line (and Campbell in particular) are vulnerable. The Seahawks bring three potential rushers to that side, and the Patriots keep Stevenson in to help block. But Seattle brings only two.
Maye hit a 7-yard out on the next Witherspoon blitz, but the sixth one put your Super Bowl party to bed. With Seattle up 21-7 and 4:37 to go, Macdonald had another exotic call left in the playbook. The Seahawks were showing a relatively safe look before the snap, but with the Patriots using tempo to attempt a quick score, Maye had time to only quickly declare a simple protection before the Seahawks were even fully set, with the Pats sliding four linemen to the left.
This time, he wasn’t fast enough to throw the ball away. Witherspoon missed out on a strip-sack, but Nwosu — who beat Moses and was in position to capitalize — was credited for an interception and took it to the house.
Amid the blitz-happy first half and deep into the second half, Maye looked frazzled. His ball placement — which was so impressive during the regular season and even on big plays in the postseason — was inconsistent. He seemed to lock onto receivers and/or rush his passes out of fear that he wouldn’t have time to throw.
In Sunday’s loss, Campbell was credited with one sack allowed but gave up a whopping 14 pressures, the most I’ve seen for any player all season. Four of those were quick pressures, tying him with Seahawks rookie Grey Zabel for the highest total of the game. Some of Maye’s 28 pressures were on the quarterback himself, but Campbell simply couldn’t hold up in pass protection and didn’t have a great day run blocking, either.
The Seahawks overpowered him with bull rushes and stronger, longer opponents. Lawrence fended off a Campbell block with one arm while stuffing Henderson at the line for no gain with his other. Derick Hall rode Campbell right back into Maye for the first sack of the night. That’s a 254-pound edge rusher bullying a 320-pound left tackle. That happens, but you rarely see what came up in the fourth quarter, when Hall did the same thing to Campbell with one arm as opposed to two.
Seattle has a deep, talented defensive line, but there was no Will Anderson Jr. or Nik Bonitto in this mix, the sort of edge rusher who goes completely supernova and can’t be blocked at his best. The backups were even eating. Rookie Seahawks defensive tackle Rylie Mills missed most of the season with a torn ACL and had played just one defensive snap across Seattle’s first two playoff games. Yet he bull-rushed Jared Wilson into Maye for a sack on one of his five snaps.
Herm Edwards: The Seahawks’ defensive front took over the game
Herm Edwards says Seattle’s defensive front was too much for the Patriots to handle.
Little adjustments from New England offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels worked for a play here or there. The Patriots pitched the ball outside to get away from the B-gap run blitzes for a single 9-yard gain. They ran a jet sweep to Henderson to take advantage of an aggressive Seahawks defense and run past an unblocked defender on the end of the line. Maye had one quick out for a completion away from the Witherspoon blitz for a 7-yard gain.
In the big picture, though, the Patriots didn’t seem to pack the schematic choices that might have given the Seahawks problems or make many adjustments to make life easier for Maye as the game wore along.
Adding an extra down could have helped, and the Pats tried flipping their tendencies in a modern way with no success. In the present-day NFL, third-and-5 can be a run down, given how comfortable teams have become with going for it on fourth-and-2 or less. So, the Pats checked into a third-and-5 run on their own 37-yard line … but then didn’t block defensive tackle Jarran Reed, who stuffed Stevenson for no gain. The Pats punted.
I can understand why Vrabel didn’t trust his offense to get a yard, but given what the Seahawks had done to that point, punting and expecting his offense to drive the length of the field for a touchdown wasn’t going to be a very successful game plan, either.
None of that mattered, of course, because Walker was an explosive play machine with the ball in his hands. He had five runs of 10 or more yards, including 29- and 30-yard runs on the same drive. He added a 20-yard catch on a screen pass. The fourth-year pro finished with 135 rushing yards and 26 receiving yards. For most of the day, he carried a Seahawks offense that wasn’t getting much from the passing game.
Walker was able to create much more than what was blocked on the day. The Patriots helped by struggling to set their edges, allowing Walker to break outside to get into the open field. He was able to pick up 30 yards behind a pulling Zabel in the first quarter; the rookie guard was able to fend off K’Lavon Chaisson, who couldn’t force the play back inside. Walker got to the corner and then ran through a Marcus Jones ankle tackle on the sideline for 20 extra yards.
Later in the same series, Walker ran behind center Jalen Sundell into a vacated gap for a big gain. He added more at the end of the run by going around Christian Gonzalez, who was stuck in no man’s land in the open field. Gonzalez saved a touchdown, but Walker put the Seahawks in range for one of their many field goals.
Sam Acho explains how Kenneth Walker III won Super Bowl LX MVP for the Seahawks.
Of course, Bell’s performance after leaving the Steelers might be a cautionary tale for teams who eyed what Walker did in this game. Bell averaged just 3.3 yards per carry away from Pittsburgh, spending most of that time mired with a moribund Jets offense and a quarterback (Sam Darnold) who nobody ever heard from again. It’s easy to be patient when you have a good run-blocking line and an offense that scares teams with the pass. And Bell was a much better receiver than Walker.
At the same time, this is a league desperate to find players who can create explosive plays against defenses that are selling out to stop them. That’s why speedy, underwhelming wide receivers like Dyami Brown and Tutu Atwell landed one-year, $10 million deals in free agency last offseason. Walker would probably be looking for a deal in the $12 million range, which is essentially in line with what those replacement-level wideouts were getting last season. He’s a better player than either.
While they weren’t needed to decide a close contest, Seattle’s special teams showed up again in a big game. In the NFC West-deciding win over the Rams in December, it was Rashid Shaheed’s punt return touchdown that helped spur a fourth-quarter comeback. The rematch in the NFC title game was likely decided by the second muffed punt from Rams returner Xavier Smith, which the Seahawks recovered for a short field and a quick touchdown.
The real star on special teams was punter Michael Dickson, who probably belonged right behind Walker and Witherspoon in the MVP discussion. Dickson punted seven times in this game, and in concert with an excellent Seahawks coverage unit, he yielded just 4 return yards to star Pats returner Marcus Jones. Dickson dropped three punts inside New England’s 6-yard line and averaged 47.3 net yards per punt.