The two conference championship games were very different. In the NFC, the Seattle Seahawks won a shootout against the Los Angeles Rams between two teams that looked worthy of that spotlight. In the AFC, the New England Patriots won against a backup quarterback in a snowstorm that made offense a rare commodity. Now, Seattle is favored against the Patriots in the Super Bowl.
The Seahawks are 5-point favorites against the Patriots on BetMGM. The associated -235 moneyline odds give Seattle a roughly 70 percent chance of winning the Super Bowl.
Both championship games were epic in their own right. The Seahawks-Rams matchup was epic in a traditional sense. Two talented teams making big plays back and forth until Seattle finally survived against its NFC West foe. The Patriots-Denver Broncos matchup was epic in the sense that the game started with a clean field, but it was covered in snow by the fourth quarter, and neither team could move the ball with any consistency late in the game.
No one cares how you get there, just that you get there.
The quarterback matchup for the Super Bowl is not exactly what you would have predicted for the season: Sam Darnold vs. Drake Maye. Both will be making their first Super Bowl starts.
Maye has had a breakout season in his second season. He wasn’t the first Patriots quarterback after Tom Brady, but he is the first one who appears to be there to stay.
Darnold struggled with the New York Jets and Carolina Panthers to start his career, but that might be more of a Jets-Panthers thing than a Darnold thing. He was a backup in San Francisco two years ago, a team that went to and lost the Super Bowl, and had a breakout season last year with the Minnesota Vikings. Now, Darnold has guided Seattle to the Super Bowl.
To the same point, neither team was expected to be here before the season. The Seahawks were 60-to-1 to win the Super Bowl at the start of the season. The Patriots had even longer odds at 80-to-1. That means both teams were given less than a 2 percent chance of winning it all when the season started. We know one of them will cash those long odds in.
The point total is at 46.5, which puts this game somewhere between a shootout and a defensive struggle.
For New England, it’s the first Super Bowl since the Tom Brady era. That was only seven years ago, so it’s not like Patriots fans can claim to be long-suffering.
Seattle is making its first Super Bowl appearance in 11 years. The Seahawks’ opponent that year? The Patriots. New England won that game 28-24 in Arizona after trailing by 10 at the start of the fourth quarter. Seattle’s last Super Bowl triumph was the year before against the Broncos.