Week 16 Thursday Night Seahawks-Rams: Advanced Review
The Rams give away pole position in the NFC West, though you can't say Matthew Stafford's was to blame
The adjusted scores quantify team play quality, with emphasis on stable metrics (success rate) and downplaying higher variance events (turnovers, special team, penalties, fumble luck, etc). Adjusted expected points added (EPA), in conjunction with opportunity-based metrics like total plays and drives, projects adjusted points. Adjusted scores have been tested against actual scores and offer slightly better predictive ability, though their primary benefit is explanatory.
All 2025-2022 and historical Adjusted Scores and other site metrics are available in a downloadable format to paid subscribers via Google Sheet.
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** Adjusted Scores table:
“Pass” - Pass rate over expectation (based on context of each play and historical averages
“Success” - Success rate on offense, a key metric in adjusted score vs actual
“H & A” - Home or away team
SEA (-1.5) vs LA
Now that’s how an island NFL game should be. In a matchup with massive implications for playoffs seeding in the NFC (and maybe the NFL’s MVP), the Seattle Seahawks beat their divisional rival Los Angeles Rams on a two-point conversion in overtime. The Seahawks are now in the driver’s seat for the No. 1 seed in the NFC (roughly 50% chance), with Rams still having some chance to lead the NFC (20%), though most likely entering the postseason on the road in a Wild Card slot (75%).
While my power rankings going into the week had the Rams as significantly better than the Seahawks - and the rest of the NFL - betting markets were much closer, putting the Seahawks nearly equal to the Rams, making them a 1.5-point favorite at home. The short week and relatively strong home field advantage playing at night in Seattle likely means the true team strengths weren’t as equivalent as implied in betting markets, but they’re close either way.
The adjusted scores model saw the Rams as the better team, with a 4-point differential in their favor. My exact team strength figures for Week 16 had the Rams at 8.3 points better than the average NFL team and the Seahawks at +5.0. Adding in an estimated 2-point home field advantage, that would make the Rams a slight favorite.
All this is to say that the way my numbers will look at the results of this contest predicting future outcomes is that the Rams outperformed expectations, and the reverse for the Seahawks. I’m preparing now for Seahawks fans to tell me next week that it is a metaphysical impossibility for a team that just lost to another team - on the basis of a bunch of high-variance plays and a final coin-toss 2-point conversion - to be ranked higher than the team that won.
The metrics for both teams don’t paint a consistent picture of superiority for the Rams that the final adjusted score conveys. The Seahawks offense had the better offensive success rate (48% to 43%), but the Rams offense finished with a vastly superior EPA efficiency (85th percentile to 54th), with results juiced by their late-down success (+11.7 EPA) and failures for the Seahawks (-13.3). The Seahawks suffered the biggest EPA swing of the game, losing 8.3 expected points on an interception that left the Rams little distance to score. Sam Darnold threw another pick (-3.9 EPA) and Cooper Kupp turned a big gain into a fumble lost (-3.1).
All of those high-variance losses for the Seahawks would point to them as the “unlucky” team, yet they were enormous winners in most of the the flukiest aspects of play: special teams value. Rashid Shaheed returned a punt 58-yard for a score (+5.1 EPA), and Rams kicker Harrison Mevis missed a 47-yard field goal with a little over two minutes remaining that could have ended up the winning score (-3.6 EPA, -21.5% win probability). You could also argue the Rams left more points on the table by only converting three of their six red-zone possessions into touchdowns.
Perhaps the strength of the individual effort by Matthew Stafford, combined with his gaudy box-score stats (457 passing yards and three touchdowns), will be enough in the narratives of the MVP race to offset the fact that the loss makes the Rams a likely Wild Card team. Then again, if Josh Allen goes ham the next few weeks and the Buffalo Bills win the AFC East, while the Rams do finish below the Seahawks, I’m sure an argument will be made that Stafford can’t be MVP on a Wild Card squad and Allen should wear the crown again this year.
Sam Darnold very nearly did the Sam Darnold thing by making huge mistakes and playing his team out of a winning chance. Darnold threw two big picks (-12.2 EPA) and took four sacks (-3.2). Luckily for him and his team, the Seahawks running game was on fire, and the Seahawks defense held the Rams to zero points on five possessions that began in the fourth quarter.
