When the Seattle Seahawks and the Los Angeles Rams meet for the NFC championship Sunday night, it will be — by at least one measure — the best NFL showdown of nearly the last five decades.
“By DVOA, the NFC Championship Game is essentially the best NFL matchup of the last 47 years, and by a lot,” Aaron Schatz, the chief analytics officer of FTN Fantasy, posted on X in the lead-up to the game.
DVOA, for those unfamiliar, stands for “Defense-adjusted value Over Average.” What is measures is a “team’s efficiency by comparing success on every single play to a league average based on situation and opponent.” More simply put, it’s a measure of how good a team is, weighted for situation and opposing team.
And the Rams and the Seahawks have the highest combined DVOA of any two playoff teams of the last 47 years.
If the analytics don’t get you hot and bothered, tho, don’t worry, because there are plenty more storylines headed into Sunday’s game. It’s a clash of division rivals who played two incredibly close games in the regular season (the combined margin of victory was three points). It’s a clash of an offensive wunderkind (Los Angeles head coach Sean McVay) and a defensive genius (Seattle head coach Mike Macdonald). It’s also a battle between two highly drafted quarterbacks (the Rams’ Matthew Stafford and the Seahawks’ Sam Darnold) in wildly different parts of their careers who both still have something to prove.
This matchup basically has everything you could want in a football game.
The Rams enter as an offensive juggernaut, leading the league in the regular season in yards per game, passing yards per game and points per game (30.5).
The Seahawks, in contrast, enter as defensive stoppers. Seattle allowed the sixth-fewest yards per game in the regular season and the fewest points per game (17.2).
Both head coaches
