Well, that was a defensive performance, wasn’t it?
Wait, that’s what I wrote last year. Let’s try something else.
Well, that was a great halftime performance, wasn’t it?
The Seattle Seahawks kicked the New England Patriots in the tuchus all night long to take home Super Bowl LX Sunday night, 29-13. It really wasn’t even that close, as the Patriots scored twice in the fourth quarter — once to give themselves a slight chance of a comeback, and once after it was completely decided.
This was a big victory for the Seahawks defense, which had -68% DVOA and shut down MVP second-place finisher Drake Maye. This was the sixth-best defensive DVOA in a Super Bowl since 1978 (table below). The offense only had -5% DVOA, although that’s partly because the opponent adjustment is based on the regular season when the Patriots defense was bad.
This was also a big victory for us here at FTN Fantasy, because DVOA has been riding the Seahawks since early in the season. Seattle first took over the top spot in DVOA after Week 3 and they held it for most of the rest of the 2025 season except for a couple of one-week blips where the Seahawks fell all the way to second place.
Remarkably, the 2025 Seahawks are the first team to win the Super Bowl after finishing the year No. 1 in either regular or weighted DVOA since the 2013 Seahawks. (This is using the current DVOA formula; if I’m remembering correctly, the 2016 Patriots were No. 1 with an older formula, but they are now No. 2 with the current formula.) This ends a weird multi-year run of teams that were among the best in DVOA history during the regular season but could not get over the hump in the postseason: the 2022 Bills, the 2023 and 2024 Ravens, the 2023 49ers and the 2024 Lions. This year, we had the Seahawks and the Rams as historically great teams, but only one of them could get it done because they had to face each other in the NFC Championship Game.
Seahawks Join Best Teams in DVOA History
The Seahawks finish the year as the fourth-best team ever by DVOA including both the regular season and the playoffs. I know, that’s much higher than public perception, but our numbers absolutely loved the Seahawks and I think we were proven pretty accurate. Extending this table a few extra teams to get both Seahawks champions on here…
Best Total DVOA with Playoffs, 1978-2025
YEAR
TEAM
W-L
WITH
PLAYOFFS
REG
SEASON
1991
WAS
17-2
54.1%
49.8%
1985
CHI
18-1
53.0%
46.3%
2007
NE*
18-1
51.0%
52.4%
2025
SEA
17-3
46.4%
41.3%
1989
SF
17-2
45.5%
35.7%
1996
GB
16-3
44.9%
39.7%
2023
BAL*
14-5
44.4%
45.4%
1992
DAL
16-3
43.2%
35.7%
2010
NE*
14-3
42.4%
45.3%
2004
NE
17-2
41.6%
35.9%
1995
DAL
15-4
41.6%
37.9%
2024
BAL*
13-6
40.9%
41.4%
1998
DEN
17-2
40.2%
35.1%
1984
SF
18-1
39.7%
33.9%
2013
SEA
16-3
39.5%
35.8%
*Did not win Super Bowl
These numbers may differ slightly from this ESPN article listing all 60 Super Bowl champions because they are updated with some play-by-play changes from my historical video review over the last couple years.
Why did DVOA have the Seahawks higher than EPA-based power ratings for most of the year? There are four main reasons:
1) The Seahawks had more turnovers than every team in the NFL except the Minnesota Vikings, but DVOA downweights turnovers compared to EPA because they are less predictive than yards and first downs. The Seahawks ended up with zero turnovers in the playoffs after 28 turnovers during the regular season.
2) Special teams. Most EPA-based ratings do not include special teams at all. Yes, special teams are less predictive than offense or defense, but they do still matter. It turns out that Seattle’s strong special teams performance from the regular season continued into the playoffs. My formula estimates that special teams were worth a total of 15 points over average to the Seahawks during the three playoff wins, with DVOA of 23%, 13% and 13%.
3) Opponent adjustments. Seattle played the eighth-toughest schedule of opponents during the regular season according to DVOA.
4) Second downs. DVOA rated Seattle’s performance on second downs higher than EPA. DVOA had the Seahawks 17th on offense and first on defense, significantly ahead of every other team. EPA had the Seahawks 20th on offense and second on defense, significantly behind the Jaguars.
Super Bowl LX DVOA
Here are the single-game ratings with and without opponent adjustments.
DVOA (with opponent adjustments)
TEAM
TOT
OFF
DEF
ST
SEA
76%
-5%
-68%
13%
NE
-9%
-22%
-10%
3%
VOA (no opponent adjustments)
TEAM
TOT
OFF
DEF
ST
SEA
61%
2%
-46%
13%
NE
-40%
-45%
-2%
3%
We get to re-run a table from last year’s Super Bowl again. Here’s a look at the best defensive DVOA in the Super Bowl, along with where each team stood after halftime and then again after three quarters.
Best Defensive DVOA in a Super Bowl, 1978-2025
YEAR
TEAM
VS
PF
PA
DEF
TOTAL
OFF
ST
1H DEF
Q1-3 DEF
2000
BAL
NYG
34
7
-103%
102%
-16%
16%
-78%
-104%
1985
CHI
NE
46
10
-103%
115%
13%
-1%
-137%
-115%
2002
TB
OAK
48
21
-86%
89%
24%
-21%
-100%
-86%
2024
PHI
KC
40
22
-73%
80%
-1%
8%
-163%
-103%
2020
TB
KC
31
9
-71%
85%
11%
3%
-33%
-43%
2025
SEA
NE
29
13
–68%
76%
-5%
13%
-66%
-83%
1991
WAS
BUF
37
24
-67%
88%
22%
-2%
-117%
-80%
2013
SEA
DEN
43
8
-67%
129%
34%
28%
-70%
-56%
2018
NE
LAR
13
3
-58%
54%
-2%
-2%
-70%
-60%
1989
SF
DEN
55
10
-56%
120%
64%
0%
-45%
-44%
1983
LARD
WAS
38
9
-56%
89%
35%
-2%
-57%
-42%
2015
DEN
CAR
24
10
-56%
35%
-41%
21%
-52%
-43%
Now let’s look at Quick Reads with the individual numbers. There are some surprising results in here. Drake Maye actually comes out with higher DYAR than Sam Darnold because of opponent adjustments. That’s how good the Seattle defense was this year! Without opponent adjustments, Maye had the worst passing YAR total for the entire playoffs of any quarterback ever, but he’s dramatically boosted by his scrambles and by the opponent adjustments for playing four straight good pass defenses. Also, as I noted above with the entire Seattle offense, Darnold gets dinged because the Patriots defense was not good during the regular season. So we end up with Darnold going from 15 YAR to -16 DYAR and Maye going from -87 YAR to -5 DYAR.
Also, Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III was surprisingly mediocre according to the DYAR metric. Walker had only a 37% running back success rate in this game, although it is hard to blame him for three failures on third-and-long when the Seahawks decided to hand him the ball. On first downs, Walker had four runs for 9 or more yards but also had four runs that were stuffed or lost yardage, and three more runs for just a single yard.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba also comes out very low because only one of his 10 targets moved the chains. He was the target on three incomplete passes and one 3-yard completion on third downs.
The Patriots receivers come out higher than you would expect, again because of opponent adjustments for the Seattle defense.
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