The Seattle Seahawks are widely considered to be the favorite over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 60.

But that certainly doesn’t mean the Patriots are a pushover, even if they did benefit from the NFL’s easiest strength of schedule.

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What are the paths to victory for each team on Sunday? FTN Fantasy’s Aaron Schatz was posed that question on Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy.

The Patriots’ path to victory

As Schatz explained, the Patriots have a much narrower path to the Lombardi Trophy.

In short, they need their pass rush to have a huge night against Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold.

The Patriots didn’t blitz much during the regular season, ranked just 19th in the NFL in blitz rate (27.4%) and 25th in pressure rate (27.2%), according to FTN Fantasy.

But during the playoffs, they’ve ratcheted up their blitz rate to 41.4%, and their pressure rate has followed by surging to 40.6%. It’s a big reason why New England has allowed just 8.7 points per game over its three playoff victories – although inclement weather certainly played a major role as well.

Darnold, meanwhile, has had some issues against the blitz.

When facing blitzes in the regular season, Darnold threw a league-high eight interceptions and ranked 23rd out of 38 qualified quarterbacks in DVOA – a popular advanced metric created by Schatz that measures overall efficiency, adjusted for situation and opponent. On non-blitz plays, Darnold ranked fifth in DVOA.

That being said, Darnold has been better against the blitz in the playoffs, completing 7 of 11 passes for 77 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions when opponents bring an extra rusher.

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On the other side of the ball, Schatz thinks the Seahawks’ top-ranked scoring defense will be able to keep standout quarterback Drake Maye and the Patriots from putting up big numbers.

That’s why he thinks it’s imperative for New England’s pass rush to muck things up and create some game-swinging plays.

“I think the main storyline of a Patriots win will be that they blitzed incessantly and they turned Darnold back into the seeing ghosts guy,” Schatz said. “… It is really hard to see a good chance of Maye lighting up the Seahawks’ defense.

“I think it’s more likely that if the Patriots win, it’s because they get to Darnold and they cover (star wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba) and Seattle can’t score enough points.”

The Seahawks’ path to victory

Schatz then had a concise, straight-to-the-point way of summing up Seattle’s path to the Lombardi.

“A Seattle win is kind of everything else,” Schatz said. “I mean, they’re so good and they’re so well-rounded that if they just play their game, they should win.”

The numbers certainly bear that out.

The Seahawks have a plus-230 point differential, including the playoffs. That’s the highest such point differential for any team entering the Super Bowl since the 2015 Carolina Panthers.

Seattle also is tied for the fifth-best total DVOA in league history dating back to 1978, including the postseason. The only teams with higher DVOA ratings are 1991 Washington, the 1985 Chicago Bears, the 2007 Patriots and the 1989 San Francisco 49ers.

This season, the Seahawks rank No. 1 in total DVOA, No. 8 in offensive DVOA, No. 1 in defensive DVOA and No. 2 in special teams DVOA.

The Patriots rank No. 7 in total DVOA, No. 5 in offensive DVOA, No. 12 in defensive DVOA and 20 in special teams DVOA.

However, New England improved considerably as the season progressed. The Patriots rank No. 2 in weighted DVOA, which places less emphasis on early-season games to give a clearer picture of how well a team is playing over the past three months.

“They are playing much better now than they were early in the season,” Schatz said. “… All their good play is stuffed late in the year and they’re playing well lately. And that is what does make them dangerous, even though Seattle is really good.”

Listen to the full conversation with FTN Fantasy’s Aaron Schatz at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Tune into Bump and Stacy weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.

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