If anyone knows what it’s like to face the Seattle Seahawks, it’s Matthew Stafford. He and the Los Angeles Rams went up against the eventual Super Bowl champions three times, going 1-2 in those games despite putting up huge offensive numbers in their last two meetings.
Stafford predicted that the Seahawks would beat the Patriots and after seeing them dominate New England in a 29-13 win, the Rams QB wasn’t surprised. He says the game went how he expected, with Seattle suffocating Drake Maye and the Patriots’ offense.
“It went about as I expected, to be honest with you,” Stafford said on SiriusXM’s “Let’s Go” podcast. “That’s kind of how I thought the game was going to go. New England’s defense kept them in it for as long as they could. And really, Seattle moved the ball well, just didn’t score down there inside the – once they crossed the 50, stalled out a couple of times. I think it could have been not as close as it was, really.”
Stafford studied the Seahawks extensively this season, not only in preparation for the Rams’ three meetings with them, but also with crossover tape when preparing for other opponents. And as he was watching the game unfold, he says he “knew what was coming a lot of the time.”
We can picture Stafford at a friend’s house watching the game, diagnosing every blitz Mike Macdonald was sending and calling out every disguised coverage on the back end like a play-by-play announcer.
Maye and the Patriots were puzzled by Seattle’s defensive attack, which made for a disastrous performance by New England’s offense.
“I’ve watched, obviously, a ton of Seattle tape, so I knew what was coming a lot of the time,” he said. “And I had watched some crossover tape with New England’s offense, so I had a little bit of a feel for that. I did not know a whole lot about what New England’s defense was doing the whole year, but they played well. It was fun to watch. That’s about how I thought it was going to go”
A lot of analysts expected the Seahawks to beat the Patriots, too, but perhaps not in the utterly dominant fashion that they did. And even the final score wasn’t indicative of how lopsided the game was.
Seattle led 19-0 in the fourth quarter and allowed just 60 passing yards to Maye in the first three quarters before he put up 235 in garbage time after the game was essentially out of hand.
The Seahawks proved they were the best team in football this season, with the Rams being viewed as a close second.
This article originally appeared on Rams Wire: Matthew Stafford not surprised Seahawks dominated Patriots in Super Bowl
Reporting by Cameron DaSilva, Rams Wire / Rams Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
