Before the most anticipated Thursday Night Football contest, we projected that the Los Angeles Rams and Seattle Seahawks might be destined to collide three times this year, and that the Week 16 matchup would determine which team would host the rubber match.
Here we are on the verge of the NFC Championship, as the two best teams in the NFL reconvene at Lumen Field for the biggest game in the history of this rivalry.
We won't relive all the improbable, unprecedented, and perhaps unjust occurrences that led to the Seahawks erasing a 16-point deficit and toppling LA that night. They're all too familiar, and the Rams have paid the price, traveling to Charlotte and then Chicago and persevering through two grueling tests.
"We've been strengthened through our scars," head coach Sean McVay said this week. "There were a handful of games (earlier this season), where⊠you're not able to make the plays that are necessary to be able to finish it. Well, that hasn't been the narrative in each of our first two playoff games."
The Seahawks earned the one-seed, the bye, and home field advantage to go along with their NFC West t-shirts and hats.
The Rams earned the right to get back to Seattle, and with revenge in Round Three, will claim the conference and go to Super Bowl LX to play for the Lombardi, rings, and legacies.
Familiarity Breeds Contempt
Seattle is rested; Los Angeles is road weary.
The Seahawks cruised; the Rams clawed.
These are the top two teams in the sport by just about any measure, and therefore this is the NFC Championship Game many expected. What happens Sunday is anyone's guess, but we did our best on the latest Between the Horns with D'Marco Farr and Maurice Jones-Drew.
Ball Hawks
The Seahawks are on a tear â 12-1 in their last 13 games, and that lone loss? At the buzzer at SoFi Stadium.
Under second-year head coach Mike Macdonald, they won more games than any group in franchise history.
Offensively, the Seahawks set a team record with 483 points scored, then tacked on 41 against San Francisco in the Divisional Round for good measure.
The league's best defense recently played eight quarters against the Niners without allowing a touchdown. Last week they forced three takeaways and shut down another three fourth down attempts from San Francisco. Despite deploying light boxes with stubborn insistence, the Seahawks have not allowed a 100-yard rusher in 26 consecutive games, the longest active streak in the NFL.
Really the only opponent who's solved the puzzle against Macdonald? McVay's Rams.
QB Won
It was great to see Matthew Stafford honored as the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA) Most Valuable Player this week, and hopefully he'll receive the AP award at NFL Honors as well. That Week 16 night in Seattle should've been his signature moment, throwing a go-ahead touchdown to Puka Nacua in overtime to cap a season-high 457-yard performance.
It's been a bit turbulent since, though he's guided game-winning drives in Carolina and Chicago to keep the Rams alive.
Look for a few things to change this Sunday, hopefully with better health and improved weather conditions relative to the postseason run so far. First, after chopping up the blitz in unprecedented fashion all year, the pressure is getting to Stafford this month. He has the lowest passer rating under pressure (24.8) in the 2025 playoffs according to Next Gen Stats (a passer throwing exclusively incompletions registers a passer rating of 39.6). Stafford is also 1-11 for 36 yds on throws beyond 20 yards in the last two wins.
Now, winds were howling and snow was swirling and fingers were hurting. We'll see if any of that is the case on Sunday. Note that the Seahawks were all over Brock Purdy in their most recent victory (pressuring him on more than half of his dropbacks) and they do a great job tamping down explosives by creating havoc without blitzing.
I expect contested catches and yards after catch to be two leading determinants for Championship Sunday.
Davante All the Way
It's hard to deviate from the featured wide receivers in this one, as Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Puka Nacua are the first foes with 1,500 receiving yards to meet in the postseason.
However, allow me to mention two other targets.
Because when you consider the All-Pro seasons they've had, and you realize that JSN (1,812) and Puka (1,882) could both get to 2,000 yards with big performances Sunday, it calls to mind that only one player in league history has done so, and he's also on the field in this game.
What a refreshing reminder of just how distinguished Cooper Kupp's Triple Crown campaign was in 2021. Smith-Njigba would need 613 yards between now and when the Lombardi Trophy is presented to catch Kupp's record (2,425), while Nacua is still 543 yards away. Staggering.
Secondly, this week, this moment, is why Davante Adams chose Los Angeles.
After leading the NFL in touchdown receptions for a third time in 2025, in a sense his season starts anew in this NFC Championship, because that's been the outer boundary of his career.
The future Hall of Famer is 0-4 in conference finals, with each loss as a member of the Green Bay Packers. The first of those defeats came in Seattle in overtime in 2014. His most recent miss, at home against Tom Brady's Bucs in 2020.
Five years later, it's time.
"Forgive me if I'm not smiling ear to ear after the first win or the second win," Adams said after surviving the Panthers and Bears to earn this shot again. "(The Super Bowl) feels almost like a mythical thing to me at this point. You do everything you can to get there, and I've been working so hard at it. We're close. We just have to finish it off."
Adams was held to only one reception (albeit the 1,000th of his career and a touchdown to boot) in Week 11 versus Seattle. He missed Week 16 with a hamstring injury. It's difficult to envision a path to victory in which he doesn't factor heavily into the Rams game plan on Sunday, especially since the Rams have gone away from their three-tight-end sets in the playoffs, and the Seahawks defend those 13-personnel looks better than any defense.
Defense Strikes Back
The Rams defense, and in particular the secondary, answered many critics with their performance in Chicago. LA is still playing because of their heroics.
Kam Curl, Kamren Kinchens, Omar Speights, Desjuan Johnson, Cobie Durant, Darious Williams, and many others met the moment and kept the Rams in the hunt.
Now, can Chris Shula and company torment Sam Darnold one more time?
His 20 giveaways were more than any player in the NFL this season. Against the Rams the last two seasons, he's coughed it up eight times.
While LA is looking to eliminate Darnold for the second straight January, he's in a much different place now and so are his circumstances.
Namely, there's no comparing his current Seahawks offensive line to the shambles in front of him last January. Furthermore, the Seattle running game has found traction with at least 160 yards gained on the ground in four straight games and eight rushing scores in that span. The Seahawks averaged a season-high 6.8 yards per carry in their most recent meeting with the Rams.
While nursing an oblique injury, Darnold didn't have to do much heavy lifting last Saturday to get his team to the NFC Championship (he was 12-of-17 for 124 yards before Drew Lock replaced him with nine minutes left). He did deliver a touchdown to Smith-Njigba and most importantly did not turn the ball over.
To my way of thinking, the throws he made to JSN and Cooper Kupp on the game-winning drive in overtime of Thursday Night Football put Darnold in a different place coming into Act Three of this season series. I know I look at him differently after that comeback.
That's the Kicker
The reason it's safe to call Seattle the most complete team in football is because of their third phase.
The Seahawks boast an All-Pro punter, the most prolific place-kicker in franchise history, and a return man who has scored three touchdowns since he was acquired at the trade deadline! They also cover kicks better than any team in the league (opponents average starting field position after kickoffs is the 28-yard line).
As you surely noticed, Rashid Shaheed did it again last week, staking Seattle to an early lead with a 95-yard return of the opening kickoff. In a strange twist, the Rams will face him for a fourth time this season (he played for the Saints at SoFi Stadium before Seattle traded fourth and fifth round picks to New Orleans to bring him to the Pacific Northwest).
Beyond his individual impact, which hopefully will be non-existent this Sunday, look at how the kicking game has shaped outcomes so far between these NFC West rivals.
Harrison Mevis' only miss came in the final minutes of regulation in Week 16.
Ethan Evans won the Rams the first meeting by downing a punt at the one-yard-line⊠and contributed to their downfall in the rematch by leaving one in the middle of the field for Shaheed.
"They're a great team, and they're great in all three phases," McVay said this week. "We'd like to think when we're humming and we're at our best, we're pretty good too."
Long Division
When writing that the 2025 Rams and Seahawks were historically great, it's not only a nod to their astronomical point differential but also drawing on next-level analytics like these. The nature of the NFL is such that the best teams don't always advance to the Super Bowl. That the NFC produced these two finalists, however, is a very deserving outcome.
The Seahawks claim 11 consecutive playoff wins at Lumen Field with fans in the stands â an important qualifier because it excludes the Rams Wild Card win following the 2020 season. That's okay, though, because the Rams were also the last team to beat them in front of a capacity crowd in the 2004 Wild Card.
The NFC West is now guaranteed to have a representative in the Super Bowl in 8 of the last 14 seasons (including 2025). It's not uncommon for division foes to decide the conference championship. According to ESPN, this is the sixth occurrence since division realignment in 2002 and third between NFC West opponents over that span. Good news for the winner on Sunday in Seattle â each of the previous five victors went on to win the Super Bowl, including your 2021 Los Angeles Rams.
