There are big advantages that come with a top-two seed in the NFL playoffs. Your team gets a week of rest while you skip the wild-card round, and then you get home field against a team that usually had an inferior regular season. The Green Bay Packers get both of these advantages, making them the favorite on Sunday evening against the Seattle Seahawks. But if this were a game on a neutral field with neutral rest, our numbers would favor the Seahawks.
Seattle is the clear choice among this weekend's underdogs as the most likely to pull off an upset win and move on to the conference championship round.Let's examine why.
Upset Watch: Seattle Seahawks at Green Bay Packers (-5)
I've covered the Packers multiple times in Upset Watch this season, and each time I bring up the fact that the Packers have an unsustainable record in close games and overall won more games than would be normally expected given their points scored and allowed. What's interesting about this matchup is that the same thing is true of the Seahawks.
Green Bay was 8-1 in games decided by eight points or fewer, and their points scored and allowed normally would project to only 9.8 wins, not 13. Seattle was 10-2 in games decided by eight points or fewer (not counting their win against Philadelphia last week), and their regular-season points scored and allowed normally would project to only 8.2 wins, not 11.
However, in the play-by-play breakdown we do at Football Outsiders, Seattle came out as the better team for the 2019 season. It was a small difference, primarily driven by each team's strength of schedule. While Green Bay played an average schedule this season, Seattle played the league's second-hardest schedule (trailing only the Los Angeles Rams).
The gap between the teams is primarily on offense. Green Bay was slightly better than Seattle for both defense and special teams, but the gap between the two offenses is larger. Seattle was fifth, 17.4% better than average, while Green Bay ranked eighth, 6.5% better than average.
On offense, the gap is all about the passing game. Both running games rank in the top six for DVOA, but the Seahawks rank fourth in pass offense DVOA while the Packers are 11th. There's an even larger gap if you measure the quarterbacks using ESPN's QBR metric, where Russell Wilson was sixth this season at 69.6 while Aaron Rodgers was just 21st among qualifying quarterbacks at 50.4.
The Seahawks' passing game has declined over the course of the season, but so has the Packers'. Seattle ranked No. 1 in passing DVOA through Week 9 but ranked only seventh for Weeks 10-17. Green Bay ranked No. 6 in passing DVOA through Week 9, then dropped to 23rd for Weeks 10-17. Seattle's advantage in the passing game comes early in downs. It ranks No. 2 on first downs and No. 3 on second downs, where Green Bay's pass defense is 15th and 18th, respectively. On third down, the two teams are more evenly matched, with the Seattle offense ninth and the Green Bay defense eighth.
Numbers from 2019 suggest that the Packers will want to play more man coverage than zone against Wilson. They played the two roughly 50-50, but Wilson was better against zone (83.6 QBR, second in the NFL) than he was against man (63.8, 12th). When the Packers do play man, Kevin King was the weaker of their two outside cornerbacks this season. Jaire Alexander allowed 7.3 yards per pass with a 60% coverage success rate, while King allowed 9.9 yards per pass with just a 51% success rate. The Packers also ranked 24th in DVOA against tight ends, so this could be a big game for Jacob Hollister.
Where the Packers have the advantage and will need to win the battle against the Seattle offense is up front. There are encouraging signs for Seattle that left tackle Duane Brown can return from a knee injury and play Sunday in Green Bay, but that just improves the Seahawks' pass-blocking from "more terrible" to just "regular terrible." Seattle ranked 31st in pressure rate allowed this season, and that's not just because Wilson tends to hang onto the ball and run into his own pressure. The Seahawks were also 28th in Pass Block Win Rate. Meanwhile, the Packers ranked ninth in Pass Rush Win Rate. Sports Info Solutions has Za'Darius Smith second in the league with 65 hurries this year; Preston Smith and Kenny Clark also each had over 30 hurries.
There's some thought that one reason Wilson is good despite facing so much pressure is that he's better than other quarterbacks under pressure. In 2019, that was true. However, being very good under pressure still means you are struggling compared to how well you play from a clean pocket. Wilson was fifth in QBR under pressure this season, compared to ninth without pressure. But he completed 45.7% of passes under duress with 5.7 net yards per pass, compared to a 74.5% completion rate and 7.2 net yards per pass without pressure. Also, Wilson's success under pressure is a one-year blip, according to ESPN's QBR metric. Research has shown that quarterback performance from a clean pocket is more consistent than performance under pressure, but Wilson's performance under pressure has been consistent -- consistently average, until this year. Each year from 2015 through 2018, he ranked between 12th and 17th in QBR when under duress.
Because the Packers can get so much pressure with their front four, they're likely to lay off one of the most common strategies that teams use to slow down Wilson. He was blitzed this year more often than any quarterback in the league (35.7% of the time according to ESPN Stats & Info charting). But the Packers blitzed just 17.8% of the time, which ranked 29th in the league. If the Packers do choose to blitz more, note that Wilson was reduced to a league-average QBR when blitzed in 2019.
The weakness of the Seattle offense happens to be the strength of the Green Bay offense: pass blocking. The Seahawks are average in Pass Rush Win Rate (16th), but it doesn't result in enough pressure later in downs, and they rank just 30th in pressure rate. Meanwhile, the Packers are ninth in pressure rate allowed and No. 1 in Pass Block Win Rate.
The strength of the Seattle defense comes in linebacker and safety play. As noted earlier, both of these pass offenses declined in the second half of the season. But the Seattle pass defense improved over that same time period. It's always dangerous to tie statistical improvements to a single player, but Seattle's improvement does track with the move to trade for free safety Quandre Diggs. In games without Diggs (including Weeks 16-17 when he was hurt), the Seahawks ranked 23rd in pass defense DVOA. In games Diggs played (including the wild-card game), the Seahawks were eighth in pass defense DVOA. And in these same games, the Seahawks were No. 1 in pass defense against deep passes, defined as passes thrown 16 or more yards through the air.
There's another problem with the Green Bay passing game that's out of Rodgers' hands, literally: drops. Sports Info Solutions has the Packers tied for third with 35 drops this season, including eight by Davante Adams, seven by Geronimo Allison and five each by Aaron Jones and Allen Lazard. The Packers will need to get better performances out of their receivers in order to beat Seattle on Sunday. Surprisingly, even Adams was just average by DVOA this season. And Marquez Valdes-Scantling (73rd out of 81 qualifying receivers) and Allison (80th) came out quite poor.
Upset Watch appears each week on ESPN+ Chalk, as Football Outsiders uses a proprietary formula to forecast the expected point spread of each game based on current DVOA ratings (explained here) and, early in the season, our DVOA projections. Each week we highlight the most likely upset on a game with a line of at least three points, plus an additional game where a significant underdog has a strong chance to cover.