The playoffs are heating up and you won't want to miss a moment. Now you don't have to! With NFL+ Premium, watch every playoff game live on mobile, get NFL RedZone during the regular season, stream game replays, and more! And for a limited time, get 40% off an NFL+ annual plan. Offer ends 2/16/26. Sign up today!
We're down to four teams on Conference Championship Sunday, with two games to decide who goes to Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara. As always, to better understand and decipher the storylines of the week, NFL Pro has a wealth of data and insights, carefully curated to highlight what matters most in each contest.
For the AFC and NFC Championships, we've broken this week's insights into two separate pieces, one for each game! These are the four biggest insights to know for the NFC Championship between the Rams and Seahawks, with all the relevant NFL Pro context and the fallout we can expect Sunday — check out the AFC Championship piece for the goods on the Patriots and Broncos!
Matthew Stafford versus the Seahawks defense in a duel of elite units
Naturally, this is how teams make it to the Conference Championship: by having NFL Pro’s most efficient passing offense and by having its third-most efficient passing defense. It's also what makes these contests so riveting and volatile, as the first two meetings between the Rams and Seahawks perfectly illustrate. In the first, Matthew Stafford threw a season-low 130 yards (and two touchdowns) but won the game 21-19. In the second, he threw a season-high 457 yards (and three touchdowns) but lost 38-37 in overtime. Some of that had to do with volume — Stafford threw 21 more passes in Week 16 than Week 11 — but much of it has to do with scheme and efficiency as well.
Seattle played their highest rate of man coverage all year in the first contest with the Rams (39.6%) but dipped to 19.6% in the second (just below their season average). They also played with a single-high safety at their highest rate in game one (64.3%) and dipped all the way to 37.3% in game two (their fourth-lowest). Curiously, they started the rematch playing just 10.5% man and 15.8% single-high coverage in the first half, but then skyrocketed to 26.9% man and 50.0% single-high in the second half. Notably, safety Coby Bryant left late in that game with a knee injury, and Ty Okada (no known relation) ended up playing a significant chunk of the fourth quarter and overtime. Stafford was more efficient against man coverage this season, with 26 TDs, just two INTs, a 118.7 passer rating and 0.33 EPA dropback — versus 19 TDs, six INTs, a 99.2 passer rating and 0.13 EPA/dropback against zone. So Mike Macdonald's second-half adjustment in Week 16 might have been more about personnel than plan. But Seattle went very zone-heavy (84.2%) and split-safety (76.3%) in their strangulation of the 49ers last weekend … so don't be surprised to see more of the same on Sunday as a counter to Stafford and his wealth of talented pass-catchers.
Seahawks tackling efficiency against the Rams run game
In a complete inversion of the passing game results from Week 11 to Week 16 (see above), the Los Angeles run game was far more efficient in game one of this matchup than in game two. This time, however, it had less to do with scheme change and much more to do with player effectiveness. Yes, the Rams ran to the strong side and outside the tackles more in game one than in game two. But the changes in tendencies were slight.
The real difference? In Week 11, the Seahawks logged a 31.8% missed tackle rate on rushes and consequently surrendered 4.4 yards after contact per carry, both their worst marks in any game all season. In Week 16, they instead logged a 10.3% missed tackle rate (their fourth-best) and 2.4 yards after contact per carry (better than their season average). In Week 11, Kyren Williams and Puka Nacua combined for 109 rushing yards on just 14 carries (7.8 per carry), including runs of 34, 30 and 18 yards from Williams and 19 yards from Nacua. But while Los Angeles rushed for 124 yards in Week 16, they needed 39 carries to get there (3.2 per carry) and their longest run was just nine yards. Seattle allowed an explosive run on 18.2% of attempts in Week 11 and literally zero attempts in Week 16 — easily their best and worst games in that metric all season. Seattle won the second meeting by the skin of their teeth in overtime, which means less effective tackling could have easily resulted in a loss … they'll need to stay disciplined in the rubber match to complete their road to Super Bowl LX.
Sam Darnold's keys to success: play action and avoiding pressure
The disparities in Sam Darnold's quarterback play when he's running play action or not, and when he's pressured or not, are drastic. According to NFL Pro, he and Seattle have a four-star advantage over the Rams when running play action — second in offensive efficiency versus 24th in defensive efficiency — by far their strongest advantage on offense. On play action dropbacks this year, Darnold threw 14 touchdowns and just four interceptions, with a whopping 11.9 yards per attempt, 130.6 passer rating and 0.41 EPA/dropback, finishing top three in each of those three categories, including first in EPA. On non-play action dropbacks, Darnold threw 11 TDs and 10 INTs and dropped to an 87.2 passer rating, 7.2 yards per attempt and -0.07 EPA/dropback. As for pressure, as I noted last week, Darnold threw for 2.8 more yards per attempt (a league-leading 9.2) and his passer rating was literally 40 points higher when he had a clean pocket in 2025.
Meanwhile, the Rams defense surrendered the fourth-highest success rate in the league against play action in 2025 (54.5%). And in their Week 16 loss to Darnold's Seahawks, they were absolutely scorched on those run fakes, surrendering 140 yards and two touchdowns on 12 play-action dropbacks, for a 145.8 passer rating, 66.7% success rate and 0.60 EPA/dropback. Additionally, while Chris Shula's defense pressured Darnold on 33.3% of dropbacks in that loss, they allowed him boosts of +16.9 points in passer rating, +15.4% in success rate and +0.42 EPA/dropback when clean versus pressured. If Los Angeles wants to shut down Darnold — like they did in the four-interception debacle in Week 11 — they'll need to dial up pressure and counter Klint Kubiak's play-action game plan.
Kenneth Walker III's explosivity with Zach Charbonnet sidelined
In a blow to Seattle's dynamic-duo ground game plan, Zach Charbonnet tore his ACL in the Divisional Round and will miss the rest of the postseason. That means it'll be up to Kenneth Walker III to carry the rushing attack this Sunday. He was certainly up to the challenge against San Francisco last week, taking a season-high 22 touches for 145 scrimmage yards and three touchdowns. And the biggest key he brings to this offense is explosivity: Walker's 14.9% explosive run rate this year was second-best among all players with 150+ carries, trailing only De'Von Achane's 16.8%, and vastly outpacing the 6.5% of short-yardage-bruiser Charbonnet.
Walker's big-play ability was particularly disastrous for the Rams in their Week 16 loss, as the running back totaled 164 scrimmage yards on just 14 touches, with a 55-yard rushing touchdown and a 46-yard catch-and-run that set up a Charbonnet touchdown two plays later. The Rams have been otherwise effective at limiting big runs — their 8.9% explosive run rate allowed was sixth-best this season — but it only takes one or two opportunities for Walker to burn them bad. And to sweeten the pot, Walker's been gaining momentum late in the season: his three highest single-game explosive run rates on at least 15 carries are his last three games, against Carolina in Week 17 and San Francisco in Week 18 and the Divisional Round. If he stays hot in the Conference Championship, the Rams might be in trouble early and often.
