NFC Championship Game: Analytics predicts who is going to the Super Bowl

While a majority of the NFL looks ahead to the NFL draft, players from the conference championship who are heading into NFL free agency, and the wild head coach carousel, the Seattle Seahawks prepare to host NFC West rivals, the Los Angeles Rams, in the NFC Championship game. With Mike McDaniel and QB Fernando Mendoza (likely) joining the AFC West this offseason, the West has a strong claim to running the NFL for years to come, starting with this weekend’s NFC title game.

While many have already slotted “The Return of the Evil Empire” New England Patriots to the Super Bowl from the AFC side, due to the Bo Nix injury, the NFC’s matchup has a bigger intrigue factor. The Super Bowl matchups that are most exciting for fans are the Patriots versus either NFC team.

Seattle returning to the top of the conference in HC Mike Macdonald’s second season, after moving on from Pete Carroll, who helped resurrect the team, is impressive. That QB Sam Darnold was able to overcome his NFL draft bust label to be a big part of the Seahawks’ quick ascent is a bigger surprise. While Seattle had the best defense in the NFL this year, by a decent margin, Darnold’s offense was a Top 10 unit as well.

For the Rams, a chance to return to the Super Bowl seemed like a fantasy this offseason when QB Matthew Stafford couldn’t practice and was trying to fix his back in a “wellness pod” that was parked in the team’s parking lot. HC Sean McVay was being asked about back surgery possibilities for Stafford in mid-August:

From “will he have back surgery?” to an MVP-level season is an impressive turnaround.

While the Los Angeles offense gets most of the attention, the Rams defense has been a top five level group throughout the regular season as well. Byron Young, Jared Verse, and Kobie Turner create pressure at a high level at the line of scrimmage to help a talented but less famous group of defenders behind them.

As we have for the last few seasons, we continue our “Analytics Predicts” feature for the NFL playoffs. FTN’s DVOA is a metric that breaks down the quality of play compared to the league average while adjusting for the strength of the opponents being played. DVOA is one of a couple of catch-all analytics measures that help us understand the beautiful game of football better.

With the teams having competed in multiple postseason games, for the championship round, we will be using FTN’s data for both the regular season and playoffs combined.

Los Angeles Rams vs Seattle Seahawks

• Overall DVOA: Seattle 1st vs Los Angeles 2nd
• Offensive DVOA: Seattle 9th vs Los Angeles 1st
• Defensive DVOA: Seattle 1st vs Los Angeles 4th

Edge: Seahawks – Talk about an exciting matchup and, perhaps, “the real Super Bowl” for the 2025 NFL season. The first and second-ranked overall teams with the best offense versus the best defense facing off for the chance to head to the big game have all the makings of an all-time great matchup. FTN’s DVOA data shows a decent gap in Total DVOA between Seattle (45.1%) and Los Angeles (35.9%), but shows the gap between the two AFC West rivals and the rest of the league, with no other team having more than 22%. The betting odds, with the Seahawks listed at -2.5, agree with the analytics data.

DVOA provides another piece of information as you make betting decisions, discuss the playoffs with your coworkers, or while making daily fantasy decisions. We are excited to see the games played on the field and see whether or not FTN’s DVOA was able to predict who is headed to the Super Bowl this year.