Sound Smart: 3 Observations to Kick Off Super Bowl Week

Happy Super Bowl week. This season's biggest game features familiar teams and new faces. The New England Patriots have made the Super Bowl for a record 12th time, and the Seattle Seahawks are in for the fourth time. For the most part, though, this will be unfamiliar territory for the current players. For the Patriots, only five players have Super Bowl experience. For the Seahawks, it’s four. The Seahawks are entering as 4.5-point favorites, and bettors are backing Seattle. But there are a few things that I think people are playing prisoner to the moment as they project this Super Bowl. So let's get into the nitty-gritty. This is "Sound Smart," where we prepare you each week with observations from the NFL news cycle. If I do my job, you’ll be fluent in the league’s most important topics. 1. IF THERE’S ONE THING YOU SHOULD KNOW AHEAD OF THE SUPER BOWL, IT’S THAT …. Don't be surprised if the two Super Bowl quarterbacks make a mess of the postseason narrative. (OR: We are overestimating Sam Darnold and underestimating Drake Maye.) Sam Darnold is fresh off the best game of his life. That’s not hyperbole. In a duel against the Rams, Darnold played out of his mind against pass-rush pressure — and in a highly pressurized situation. The L.A. defense had a knack for making Darnold look like total crap, after all. But Darnold rose to the occasion in a way we’ve never seen him do before. And he did it despite an oblique injury that largely held him out of practice. That doesn’t necessarily mean he can do it again. I’d like to think Darnold has changed — forever. That he’ll never again see ghosts. That he’ll never again throw four interceptions in a game. But remember: He did exactly that just 10 games ago. And just two games ago, the Patriots intercepted Texans QB C.J. Stroud four times. (And they made Chargers QB Justin Herbert look terrible in the wild-card round. (And obviously, Broncos backup Jarrett Stidham looked like a hapless backup in the AFC Championship Game.) This Patriots defense is smart. The unit is a bear trap, just hoping to snag Darnold’s leg. He’s a tremendous story. He’s a good dude. And he has helped caution teams and media members from prematurely labeling a player "a bust." It’s a wonderful narrative, and it's important. But we can’t be sure it’ll have a wonderful ending — just because that's neat and tidy for America. Maybe Darnold has changed. But we should entertain the idea that Mike Vrabel could outsmart the sometimes erratic Seahawks quarterback. And then there’s Drake Maye, who has landed on the opposite end of the spectrum. Maye built his MVP campaign and the Patriots’ regular-season success upon his rare efficiency throwing downfield. The second-year pro led the league in yards per attempt (8.9) and completion percentage (72%), a logic-defying set of complementary statistics. But in the postseason against elite defenses (like the one he’ll see in the Super Bowl), Maye has regressed. Through three postseason games, he has completed just 34.6% of his downfield passes (9-of-26) and has gone 0-for-7 on downfield passes into tight windows, per Next Gen Stats. New England's offense can't reach the same parts of the field — they're not as explosive or as threatening. The Patriots QB has tried to compensate with his legs — generating first downs on the ground. And that has helped enough to get wins for New England against teams with lesser offenses. But Maye has been limited by a right shoulder injury. Plus, he missed practice due to illness on Friday. The Seahawks' defense was the No. 1 scoring defense in the NFL. And even if the Patriots can figure out how to score, Seattle's offense is proficient enough to win in a shootout. We saw that last week. If you look at what Maye has done in the playoffs so far, you’d think he and the Patriots can't handle a shootout. If you look at what Maye did in the regular season, you’d think he could. The Patriots will need to figure out how to get Maye and the offense to recapture their regular-season magic. Or else. With Darnold, you have a really good player who will occasionally play the worst game you've ever seen. With Maye, you have a regular-season MVP candidate whose defense has helped him enormously in the playoffs. Which version of those fascinating quarterbacks will show up on Super Bowl Sunday? 2. HE SAID WHAT?! At this time last week, Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said he’d "watched like five plays" from the Patriots. So you can bet it was a busy week for him. I think this is an interesting piece of perspective about how the Super Bowl works — and maybe why both teams get so much time to prepare for it. These teams have not seen each other since September 2024. Macdonald was coaching that Seahawks team, but he was coaching against a completely different Patriots team. Even at quarterback, where Jacoby Brissett started over Maye. New England underwent a full-scale rebuild when it hired Mike Vrabel in January 2025, turning over the roster and the coaching staff and building around Maye, whom the Patriots drafted two years ago. Macdonald has been in Seattle for only two years and Darnold is in his first season. These two organizations have embraced full-scale change on a similar two-year horizon. The teams had scouts at each other’s games. Their pro scouting departments had started the process. But the coaching staffs sometimes don't turn the page until they’ve won their conference championship game. Then it’s a full sprint. The Seahawks haven’t had to do this yet this postseason. Both their opponents were division rivals where the matchup was their third of the year. And not only did Macdonald admit that he hadn’t gotten into the Patriots film. He also admitted he was planning to get on the phone with coaches like John Harbaugh to pick their brains about how the Super Bowl week should get laid out — and how he should design and install Seattle's game plan. Everything is a little different in Super Bowl week. The bye week adds more time. The logistics eat away at that time. (Players will spend time getting tickets for loved ones, bussing around a busy city to get to practice and media obligations, attending marketing and other money-making opportunities.) Even the halftime is unusually long, given there’s an abridged concert. Coaches have to figure out not just how to keep these things from becoming distractions but also how to make some of these oddities work for them. 3. TEN THINGS I THINK I THINK ABOUT … The NFL hiring and firing cycle. 1. Seahawks OC Klint Kubiak (and projected Raiders head coach) was the most impressive offensive coordinator in the league this season — after Patriots OC Josh McDaniels. Kubiak should be outstanding in coaching up Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza, the projected No. 1 overall pick. 2. New Giants coach John Harbaugh made a great first impression on QB Jaxson Dart. "Jax loves him! He’s excited!" Dart’s father, Brandon, texted me. The Dart-Harbaugh tandem should surprise folks next year in the NFC East. 3. Joe Brady pulled the Bills out of a tailspin. Firing Sean McDermott was the right thing to do, but the messaging got convoluted — and Bills owner Terry Pegula came away looking foolish. But in his introductory presser, Brady made a strong impression. 4. Brady would be wise to make heavy use of his newly-hired OC, Pete Carmichael from the Broncos. Carmichael comes from the Sean Payton coaching tree and should help push the Bills back into more vertical passing. (Brady was infamous for his obsession with the WR screen game, but that might have been out of necessity due to weak personnel at that position.) "[Carmichael] was more behind the scenes [in Denver]," a Broncos source told me. "I know the QBs really loved him. He’s a great guy and smart." 5. This Eagles’ offensive coordinator search had some red flags. Multiple Philly OC candidates withdrew their names from consideration or took other jobs: Mike McDaniel, LSU OC Charlie Weis Jr., Bears OC Declan Doyle, Bobby Slowik and Zac Robinson. It says something that the Eagles struggled to find a coordinator for this Super Bowl-winning team that features Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley, A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith. 6. The Eagles landed on Sean Mannion, who was a backup quarterback as recently as 2023 and rose quickly with the Packers. He did wonders with Jordan Love in Green Bay, where they ran an efficiency-based passing attack. That offensive philosophy worked well for the Eagles in 2024 on their Super Bowl run. 7. Sam Darnold and J.J. McCarthy appear to have gotten Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah fired. It was hard to come back from moving on from Darnold (now in the Super Bowl!) and committing to McCarthy (empirically the worst starter in the NFL last year). And it seemed like the GM almost did. But on Jan. 30, the Vikings let him go — which is an awfully late point in the offseason. But it seems like, after conversations with coach Kevin O’Connell, the GM wasn’t on the same page moving forward. (That makes me think McCarthy is just about finished in Minnesota.) 8. Mike McDaniel, Justin Herbert and Jim Harbaugh are the perfect match — or a disaster. Stylistically, McDaniel and Harbaugh are on opposite sides of the spectrum, from their clothes to their play designs to their mannerisms. McDaniel is creative. He's focused on what’s new and is a little eccentric. He's also obsessed with speed. Harbaugh is a traditionalist who loves to pound the rock. This could be awesome: ying and yang. This could also be terrible. I’m pulling up a front-row seat, because Herbert’s prime years are on the line. 9. New Ravens coach Jesse Minter hired former Bears assistant Declan Doyle as offensive coordinator — and Ben Johnson's coaching tree has its first apple to fall. Minter appears to be an elite young defensive mind. He'll take care of that side of the ball. Can Doyle help on offense with Lamar Jackson? Hopefully, Doyle had enough time to soak up Johnson's magic. 10. The Broncos firing OC Joe Lombardi seemed to be about retaining Davis Webb. Webb might be the Bills' offensive coordinator right now, if Sean Payton hadn’t promoted him from offensive pass game coordinator and quarterbacks coach to OC. In Sound Smart, we're diving deeper and thinking outside the box about the week that was in NFL action.