Field Gulls
It’s the postseason and the Seattle Seahawks are scheduled to take to the field against the San Francisco 49ers in a matchup of NFC West foes with a trip to the NFC Championship Game on the line.
For whichever of the two teams loses the game Saturday night at Lumen Field, it will mark an end to the 2025 NFL season that started in the exact same place in Week 1. In the meantime both teams earned the right to play in the postseason, with the Seahawks earning a first round bye the 49ers upsetting the defending champion Philadelphia Eagles in the Wild Card round.
All of that sets up a matchup between two teams who have already played a pair of very close games this season.
The season opened for the teams with the Niners holding off Seattle 17-13, with the game effectively ending with a late Sam Darnold fumble.
Then, in Week 18, the Seahawks prevailed when Christian McCaffrey was unable to haul in a pass that had been ever-so-slightly tipped, gifting Drake Thomas his first career interception.
Now, in the Divisional Round the two teams once again face off. This time, though, the stakes are as high as they can be, with the loser’s season ending.
That brings things to the important question about which version of Sam Darnold the Seahawks will get on Saturday. Specifically, will they get first half of the season Sam Darnold who lit opposing defenses up, or will fans watch second half Sam Darnold, who helped the team to a franchise-best 14-3 finish, albeit with glimpses of Jets- and Panthers-era Darnold showing through.
As Field Gulls Managing Editor Mookie Alexander chronicled, the Seahawks offense has been inconsistent during the second half of the season, and in particular the way opponents defended the Seattle offense changed midseason.
As the data, shows, though, the Niners laid out how to slow down the Seattle offense in Week 1, other defensive coordinators simply aren’t as good at their jobs as Robert Saleh. Saleh’s 49ers defense finished near the top of the league in percentage of plays on which five or more defensive backs were on the field.
That is, of course, relevant to the matchup this weekend because the answer to the question about what happened to the Seahawks offense midseason that caused Sam Darnold to go from Superman to seeing ghosts is rather simple. Sure, fans have debated non-stop about what changed, but the answer is that, as noted above, how opponents defended the Seattle offense changed, which changed what was asked of Darnold.
That chart is a whole lot of numbers without a ton of explanation, so to break it down for those who have questions, the five columns of the table are as follows:
