- New England Patriots should hunt for explosive plays on straight dropbacks: New England’s 19.4% explosive pass play rate (15-plus-yard gain) on straight dropbacks is the second-highest of any offense since the high-octane 2018 Kansas City Chiefs.
- 2026 NFL Draft season is here: Try the best-in-class PFF Mock Draft Simulator and learn about 2026's top prospects while trading and drafting for your favorite NFL team.
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Super Bowl 60 is no different. Both teams arrive with clear identities on both sides of the ball, and a noticeable lack of bona fide superstar players who can throw schemes out the window and win rings with sheer talent alone.
This matchup is less about the New England Patriots or Seattle Seahawks unveiling exotic concepts saved for the final stage; instead, it will come down to which team can best execute their core identity, which got them this far, while identifying and exploiting the most fragile areas in the opponent’s structure.
Rather than focusing on individual superstars or headline narratives, this breakdown strictly focuses on the schematic pressure points most likely to decide the game.
Seattle Seahawks Defense: Increase blitz rate to unsettle Drake Maye
Over the course of the regular season, the Seahawks blitzed on 27% of opponents’ dropbacks, good for the sixth-lowest blitz rate in the league.
In their two postseason games, that blitz rate has shrunk by more than half to just 12.8%. Mike Macdonald dialed up just 10 blitzes on 78 combined passing snaps in their wins over the 49ers and Rams.
Seattle’s near-insurmountable lead for much of the game against the San Francisco 49ers meant there wasn’t much need for aggressive defensive play calls and sitting back in coverage may have also felt like the best strategy against a savvy veteran like Matthew Stafford in the NFC Championship Game.
However, to get under Drake Maye‘s skin, defenses have typically needed to employ more pass-rushers than usual. Maye’s PFF passing grade when blitzed is a fairly standard 68.7 for the season, ranking 18th out of the top 32 quarterbacks. It pales in comparison to his 84.5 passing grade when opponents don’t blitz — ranked third best in the league.
If you were to go off his passing stats alone, they still look elite even when Maye is blitzed. His 115.8 passer rating in these situations is the third highest in the league and he’s keeping turnover-worthy plays at a minimum. But it’s more about what happens when Maye isn’t throwing the ball against the blitz. He has taken a league-high 24 sacks.
When Maye comes under pressure against the blitz, opponents bring him down at the sixth-highest rate of any quarterback, and the names above him are either aging veterans (Aaron Rodgers, Geno Smith) or starry-eyed rookies (Cam Ward, Tyler Shough).
The Seahawks possess one of the most technically advanced coverage units the league has seen. It is designed to take advantage of quarterbacks prone to making mental mistakes. However, we’ve seen enough of Drake Maye by now to know that when he’s consistently afforded sufficient time, you’re waiting on a mistake that’s never going to come.
The Seahawks must force the issue and proactively search for negative plays by sending additional pressure. Their four-man rush has ranked 20th in sack percentage this season, while their five-or-more-man rushes rank third highest in the same category.
New England Patriots Offense: Hunt for explosive plays on straight dropbacks
There has been no more dangerous offense in the league this year on the most basic, common, standard shotgun dropback than the New England Patriots.
Forget about Detroit’s vicious screen game, Seattle’s effectiveness off play-action, or Sean McVay’s ability to land major blows on any other variety of dropback. This Patriots offense doesn’t need deception, bells, or whistles to exploit opponents downfield.
New England’s 19.4% explosive pass play rate (15-plus-yard gain) on straight dropbacks is the second-highest of any offense since the high-octane 2018 Kansas City Chiefs.
In reality, the Patriots' ground game prospects look bleak in this matchup. Going on long sustained drives of ten plays or more just isn’t sustainable when you can’t rely on your rushing attack.
Finding these explosive plays is an absolute necessity for the Patriots. They cannot beat this Seahawks defense by continuously wearing them down with jabs; the Patriots must land their uppercut.
The good news for Seahawks fans is that their defense profiles as a unit extremely adept at limiting major aerial gains. They rank third best in the league in explosive pass rate allowed, and when you remove the high-octane Los Angeles Rams from the equation, whom they’ve faced three times, they rise to first in the NFL, allowing an explosive pass rate below 10%.
It’s an unsurprising matchup of strength versus strength in the Super Bowl, but while the Seahawks defense will play the hand they’re dealt, there’s no hiding place for the Patriots offense, which don’t have very many paths to putting points on the board.
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Explore Kupp's CareerSeattle Seahawks Offense: Identify man coverage and feed Jaxon Smith-Njigba
While the Seahawks are undoubtedly an offense that wants to impose a run-first play style — ranking ninth in early-down rushing rate this season — they must be willing to get bold when the Patriots show man coverage.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba has terrorized cornerbacks in man-to-man coverage all season long. He leads the league with both a 92.3 PFF receiving grade and a staggering 4.16 yards per route run against man coverage. Smith-Njigba has even hauled in seven of his nine contested catch opportunities in man-to-man!
Sam Darnold’s passer rating when looking Smith-Njigba’s way against man coverage is 146.6, compared to 116.9 when opponents sit in zone (which is still extremely impressive).
While the above stats may point to the contrary, the Patriots will play several reps of man coverage in this game. It’s in their DNA. No defense goes from running the ninth-highest man coverage rate all season to completely abandoning it in the Super Bowl.
It’s up to Sam Darnold and Klint Kubiak to identify when they’ve caught the Patriots in man. New England’s outside cornerback duo of Christian Gonzalez and Carlton Davis III has enjoyed impressive seasons, but neither has boasted a strong résumé in man coverage.
Gonzalez is a wonderful athlete but may not be suited to a receiver as crafty as Smith-Njigba. Davis has graded out 71st among 85 cornerbacks in man coverage this year.
The Seahawks have shown they can get creative with Smith-Njigba’s alignment — his most recent touchdown came on a corner route out of the backfield. If their run game starts humming and the Patriots feel the need to start loading the box, Seattle must trust their coverage tells and attack downfield with their best overall player.
New England Patriots Defense: Take away Sam Darnold’s first read
It sounds simple, at risk of sounding too vanilla for an article centered around schematic advantages. Sam Darnold is not the same quarterback who once struggled in a multitude of areas. His effectiveness has no noticeable drop-off against certain coverage structures or pass-rush approaches. Disguising coverage shells and mixing up assignment responsibilities has brought little to no impact on Darnold’s high-quality play over the last two seasons.
The one area where Sam Darnold both looks and grades out as the same quarterback we saw struggle with the New York Jets is when you force him away from his first read.
Make no mistake, Darnold is as good as they come when his first read is available. He leads the league in yards per attempt when pulling the trigger on his primary read, and is the fourth-highest graded quarterback (out of 32) in these circumstances.
When forced away from his primary read, that’s when Darnold starts to look like the same fringe starter we watched before his 2024 glow-up season. In situations where quarterbacks move off their first read, Darnold ranks 22nd out of 32 quarterbacks.
When looking beyond his primary target, Darnold has thrown just four touchdowns to three interceptions. He places inside the top ten in turnover-worthy-play rate, and his yards per attempt drops right down to around the league average.
Granted, forcing a quarterback off their first read is not an exact science. Defensive coordinators obviously don’t know where the play is intended to end up before the snap. But they can study Klint Kubiak’s offensive tendencies.
One thing that sticks out is their affinity with ‘out’ routes as Darnold’s primary read. They account for almost a quarter of Darnold’s first-read completions this year. His 56 ‘out’ route completions as his first read are the most of any quarterback in the league this season.
This is useful information for the Patriots’ cornerbacks. Their concept identification is obviously much more advanced than this breakdown allows, but an additional dose of outside leverage on the perimeter is definitely one way the Patriots could unsettle Darnold as he looks to find rhythm with nerves surely a factor in the opening stages.