The Seattle Seahawks’ clash with the Los Angels Rams on Sunday will be appointment viewing for many, especially for those fascinated by advanced stats.

The elephant in the room with the Seattle Seahawks

The matchup isn’t just a battle for NFC West supremacy between two teams who sit a tied atop of their division, it’s been labeled as the “DVOA Bowl” due to Seattle ranking first and Los Angeles second in one of football’s most popular advanced metrics.

FTN Fantasy chief analytics officer Aaron Schatz, who is the creator of the DVOA metric, reported this will be the 26th matchup between the top two DVOA teams in the regular season since 1978, and the fourth in the past three seasons.

So what exactly separates the Seahawks from the Rams as the No. 1 team in DVOA? Schatz explained during a conversation with Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy on Tuesday.

“The difference between Seattle and the Rams is almost entirely special teams, where Seattle is No. 2 and I have the Rams 23rd,” Schatz said.

As Schatz pointed out, much of what was hurting the Rams in their special teams DVOA was field-goal kicking. Second-year kicker Joshua Karty was just 10 of 15 on field-goal attempts and 23 of 26 on extra-point attempts in Los Angeles’ first eight games. But the Rams made a change last week and replaced Karty with Harrison Mevis, who went 6 for 6 on extra-point attempts and had no field-goal attempts in his debut last week.

“So the gap between the teams may not be that large, which makes for an even better game,” Schatz said. “I mean, offense and defense, these two teams are about equal. The Rams are a little better on offense, the Seahawks are a little bit better on defense, and the Rams are more balanced.”

What to expect

The Seahawks being the top-ranked in DVOA would seem to indicate they are the favorite, but Schatz said that might not be the case.

“Surprisingly, the No. 2 team wins a lot of the time. So, like I said, it’s not a guarantee that Seattle is going to win this just because they’re higher in my ratings, especially because the game is in Los Angeles,” Schatz said.

“Now, we can argue about what kind of home-field advantage the Rams have. When I said something about the game in Los Angeles, somebody responded with the current airplane ticket prices from Seattle to Los Angeles, which are very reasonable. So there probably will be a lot of Seahawks fans at this game.

“But yeah, the No. 2 team wins more than you might think. The good news for the Seahawks is that they get to play two of these, and the other one is in Seattle and it’s later in the season.”

Hear the full conversation at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Listen to Bump and Stacy weekdays from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app. 

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