The final Tuesday Teasings column for 2025 looks at the Seattle Seahawks, currently atop the NFL’s National Football Conference playoff seedings with a 13-3 record. The team’s final game is Saturday night on the road against the surging San Francisco 49ers, and Seattle should be favored by about three points, all things considered. This means, of course, it’s anyone’s game, really, so NFL fans should be in for a good time there.

On a neutral field, the Seahawks would have a 6.3-point edge, sabermetrically speaking, over the 49ers. And yet, Seattle is not even the top sabermetrically rated team in the NFC: that honor belongs to the Los Angeles Rams, still, despite their 11-5 record and third-place status in the West Division, below the 12-4 San Francisco squad. Math is a fickle, funny thing when it comes to sports analysis, of course, as we have said.

Interestingly, the Rams, the Seahawks, and the 49ers are the top three teams in the conference, based on the math (more on this come Thursday, January 1, 2026—stay tuned). Yet the Seattle offense has been the second worst in the NFL in turning over the ball: the Seahawks have lost 28 turnovers in just 16 games, and usually that dooms a team pretty roughly. Coughing up the ball on almost one of every six drives is very bad.

Who are the guilty parties? Well, quarterback Sam Darnold has committed a lot of them, when you factor in 14 interceptions and 10 overall fumbles (not all of them lost). No one else on the team has fumbled more than three times, so Darnold’s a turnover machine. To beat Seattle, a defense has to pressure him one way or another. The Seahawks have lost three games by a combined nine points, winning three others by six points.

That is a lot of close games, and the Seattle defense has been stellar. It rates out sabermetrically as the best in the NFC, although not by a lot (over the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles). The Seahawks also lead the conference in fewest points allowed (289) with one game to go, and they were able to hold the 49ers to just 17 points in an opening-game loss back in September. That game was quite telling …

Trailing by four points in the final seconds, the Seattle offense had a second down on the San Francisco nine-yard line. With 37 seconds left, Darnold was sacked and fumbled, with the 49ers recovering the ball to win the game. However, the player sacking him? Nick Bosa. He is out for the year, and the S.F. defense has been somewhat toothless lately, as we saw against the Chicago Bears on Sunday night at Levi’s Stadium.

The Seahawks defense is much better than the Bears defense, so we expect Seattle to give the 49ers offense a little more trouble than Chicago did. But Darnold’s offense is still capable of thriving against a now-mediocre San Francisco defense; Seattle has scored the second-most points in the conference this season. Thus, overall, while we expect the 49ers to play their hearts out, we do see the Seahawks winning the game.

But if Darnold turns into a turnover machine on his own, which he is capable of, all bets are off, folks.