Ironically I was more nervous about the 49ers, to me that was like 50/50 game, they held us to 13 points twice, and thought they’d not only be playing with house money at this point but I thought they’d be extra feisty, like trying to murder us extra feisty. But first play of the game made me feel 100% confident.
Rams I was 75/25, I knew it was going to be evenly matched for 2 to 3 quarters but did not feel they’d be sustainable for all 4 quarters.
Pats, was 90/10.
I was nervous about Maye’s legs but then I remembered we had Milroe.
I was nervous about the Refs getting too involved especially where the betting money was going but the whole drama about the team being up for sell, just reading in between the lines, that the NFL probably wouldn’t care about steering over millions when billions were involved.
Which meant the only thing that scared me was Barmore and Williams taking over this game but you can obviously scheme around them because other than Christian Gonzalez they didn’t really have any other type of X-Factor that worried me on that defense.
And I wasnt 90% confident just because every analytic and stat data pointed in the Seahawks favor. It was scheduling that was less about who and more about when and where.
Since the Pat’s week 14 bye they had played every single Sunday, they were basically blessed and cursed with the same pattern of rest and recovery for 7 weeks straight while the Seahawks prepared both on short rest and long rest during the same time frame and were tested in terms of preparation.
That and the fact that the Patriots haven’t played on the West Coast since week 4 in 2024.
Basically, I felt the Pats would lose most of their momentum and moxie they’d been running on and would be way less prepared to navigate the 14 day SB spectacle than the Seahawks would, that they’d come out more flat and more empty that any football magic or luck would be rendered futile and the statistics and strategy would prevail.
Long-story short, Pats might have been able to battled and made it much closer if this game was played a week after the CGs in a more geographically friendly location but they weren’t going to “roll” the Seahawks ever.