Seahawks have to ‘let it rip’ to best Rams in NFC championship Sunday

For the first time in 11 years, the Seattle Seahawks return to the NFC Championship game Sunday, facing off for the third time this season against the Los Angeles Rams. Twelves and fair-weather fans alike are feeling pretty good about the Hawks’ chances after they trounced the 49ers last week. For insights on what might be coming at Lumen Field this weekend, KUOW’s Kim Malcolm reached out to Jerry Brewer, who writes about sports for The Athletic.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Kim Malcolm: A few weeks ago, you told KUOW that this was the matchup everyone wanted to see, and it has now manifested itself. You are going to be there at the game. What do you think the atmosphere is going to be like walking into Lumen Field?

Jerry Brewer: As crazy, crazier, than it has been since the heart of the Pete Carroll, Russell Wilson, Legion of Boom days. It's going to be absolutely crazy. We're talking more than a decade in the waiting for Seahawks fans for Seattle to get back to this level.

You wrote a piece about the team and how they're doing with the headline, ‘Yes, the Seahawks really are this good.’ You said they should be considered the clear favorites to go all the way. Why are they so good?

For a team that is 15 and 3 on the season, they've kind of snuck up on people. Normally, that doesn't happen. We're talking about the best defense in the NFL. But people forget that the Seahawks finished third in scoring this year. In the regular season, they outscored opponents by more than 190 points, which is 11 or so points per game, which is just blowout by NFL standards. If you compare them to the Denver Broncos, who are in the AFC championship game, same record, number one seed as well, they were like 100 points worse in point differential than the Seahawks. This is a dominant team, but I don't think people think of them that way because Sam Darnold, who was a reclamation project, is their quarterback, and because the Seahawks haven't been at an elite level in quite some time.

Let's talk about the players a little bit. There is a lot of talent, but is there anyone in particular that you think people should be keeping their eye on Sunday?

Well, the Seahawks’ best player is Jaxon Smith-Njigba, their wide receiver. Unanimous first team All Pro, he's an extraordinary player. On defense, they don't have a superstar to the level that Jackson has risen. However, they have about eight or nine really good players. We could go through so many names, but let's start with the defensive lineman, Leonard “Big Cat” Williams, just a really gentle giant, but a phenomenal player. You can go to Ernest Jones IV, the middle linebacker, who changed everything for this defense. You can go to Devon Witherspoon, a dynamic cornerback on the back end of that defense. You can even go to a rookie, safety Nick Emmanwori, who is just an impossible to replicate player, and someone who has just fundamentally changed everything they can do on defense. I've never seen in recent memory a defense that was as good from front to back as the Seahawks are.

And they're young as well.

One of the youngest teams in the NFL. If they're able to make the Super Bowl, they'll be one of the youngest teams to make a Super Bowl. If they win it, one of the youngest teams to win the Super Bowl. People have to go back to 2013-2015, the team that broke through and brought Seattle its first championship. They were similarly youthful. And what does that mean? That normally means that you're going to have a long run of success. You have to give a tremendous amount of credit to John Schneider, who was recently named the executive of the year in the NFL, and rightfully so, for what he's put together.

Would you say that there's anything that the Seahawks have to avoid to go all the way?

I think that the only thing that can beat Seattle is if they turn the ball over and put themselves in bad positions. For Sam Darnold, who has just been a remarkable comeback story the last two years in the NFL, first with the Minnesota Vikings, now with the Seahawks, if there's been a kryptonite for him, it's that in big moments he's committed turnovers, and the Rams have benefited the most from Sam Darnold making mistakes, both last year in the playoffs, when he was with the Vikings, but then also this year, in two games with the Seahawks against the Rams. He threw four interceptions in a game that they lost barely to the Rams, had multiple turnovers, but came back and played really well in the comeback victory that the Seahawks had late in the season.

It's on him to manage the game. He doesn't have to do too much, just has to manage the game and keep the mistakes at a minimum. But what you don't want to do is play tight and play timid. He has to go out there and he has to let it rip. He looked really good last week against the Niners, but he didn't have to do much. He only had to throw 17 passes. He's going to have to do a lot more against this team.

Looking ahead, maybe past Sunday at the risk of jinxing all this, what storylines are you most interested in?

As a longtime Seattleite, I would love to see the Seahawks vs. the Patriots again, because we've been waiting for 11 years to get back. That's the Super Bowl that the Seahawks seemingly had and blew. And there's no one on this roster who went through that, but to this city and to this organization, even though Tom Brady and Bill Belichick wouldn't be on the other side, I think it would be a huge moment of release for the angst of Seattle sports fans to get one back over the Patriots.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.