Analysis: Rams+Myles Garrett=Super Bowl faves. But are Seahawks still better?
“They are going for it!”
“They are the team to beat.”
Indeed, they are oddsmakers’ futures betting favorite to win the NFL championship this coming season.
The Rams, that is.
Wait...the Rams?
Didn’t the Seahawks win the Super Bowl four months ago? Didn’t the Seahawks beat the Rams twice in the final weeks of the season to get there, including the last game Los Angeles played?
They did. That was the NFC championship in January.
Since then, the Rams have made two mammoth, splash moves in an effort to dethrone the Seahawks. L.A. remodeled one of its more troublesome spots, the defensive secondary. The Rams traded with Kansas City to get All-Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie, then gave the former Washington Huskies star the league’s richest contract at his position.
Then the Rams signed Jaylen Watson, McDuffie’s former Kansas City teammate, to be his cornerback partner in Los Angeles, too.
Biggest of all, this month the Rams traded with Cleveland to acquire Myles Garrett, the two-time NFL defensive player of the year. Garrett’s set a league record with 23 sacks last season for the woeful Browns.
Los Angeles also re-signed NFL most valuable player Matthew Stafford to a two-year contract extension. He turned 38 this offseason.
The Seahawks? They weren’t nearly as sexy as the Rams this offseason. The Seahawks decided to bring back almost all the players that just won the Super Bowl. They want to continue with a locker-room a culture that Seattle’s players say is the reason they won it all last season.
Los Angeles loaded up with some of the sport’s biggest stars on defense. Seattle stood pat with its top-ranked defense from last season. That is why the Rams are the futures betting favorites to win Super Bowl 61 next February, per VegasInsider.com and its summary of Las Vegas sportsbooks.
The Seahawks aren’t even favored to win their own division, the NFC West, let alone the Super Bowl. In fact, Vegas Insider also lists the Seahawks with the fourth-best odds to win Super Bowl 61, behind also the Baltimore Ravens and Buffalo Bills.
Professional athletes love to seek slights and use them for motivation. Real, perceived, even imagined slights. So, oh, yes, on the same day this month the Seahawks received their Super Bowl 60-champion rings, they noticed all the love the Rams are getting over them.
“I think I’ll be lying if I said there wasn’t a little extra motivation from hearing that type of stuff,” Pro Bowl defensive lineman Leonard Williams said. “There’s a little extra, like, chips on our shoulder.
“You know, we just came off a Super Bowl-winning season. And people are still giving other people (as) favorites over us.”
Seahawks also notice who Rams lost
Thing is, the Seahawks feel their Mike Macdonald-schemed defense is still better than the Rams’ defense overall.
That’s because of what Seattle still has. It’s also because of what the Rams had to give up to get Garrett.
The Seahawks have 49 of the 53 players who were regulars on the 2025 team back for 2026.
That includes 20 of 22 starters of offense and defense. Super Bowl Most Valuable Player Kenneth Walker and safety Coby Bryant are the only departures. Walker signed with the Chiefs in free agency. Bryant did the same with the Chicago Bears. “There’s a lot of guys that we love on our team, so let’s keep them,” Macdonald said of his team’s approach to this offseason.
“Let’s keep as many as we can.” They are Super Bowl champions. Hard to argue with that logic.
Yes, the Seahawks noticed the Rams, them adding Garrett, in particular.
But they also noticed what L.A. lost in the trade to acquire him.
The defending champs are not exactly crying about Jared Verse exiting the division, and the entire NFC.
Seattle’s coaches, particularly on offense, spent much of Rams game weeks the last couple seasons scheming how to block Verse. The 25-year-old outside linebacker and steaming train off the edge had 12 sacks and 22 tackles for loss in his first two NFL seasons for Los Angeles. He made the Pro Bowl in both his rookie and second years.
Verse has been in on three sacks with seven hits on the quarterback in five career games against the Seahawks. He had a sack and three hits on Seattle quarterback Sam Darnold in the NFC title game while playing 90% of the Rams’ defensive snaps at Lumen Field in January.
Analysis of Seahaws, Rams
The Seahawks’ secondary lacks the Rams’ new, top-end star talent.
But Seattle’s is deeper.
Devon Witherspoon is a three-time All-Pro. Seattle re-signed Josh Jobe at $8 million per year to start opposite him at cornerback. The Rams don’t have the Seahawks’ do-it-all Nick Emmanwori. No one in the league does. He’s listed as a safety. He plays more often as a strongside outside linebacker in Macdonald’s nickel defenses. He also played end in his dynamic rookie season of 2025.
Macdonald is touting how much Nehemiah Pritchett will get a chance in his third NFL preseason with Seattle to be a rotating, first-team cornerback. Pritchett was that, with Witherspoon inside at nickel, during offseason practices this spring. Seattle also signed eight-year NFL veteran Noah Igbinoghene and drafted cornerback Julian Neal in the third round this spring. Igbinoghene has started for Miami and, most recently, Washington.
The Seahawks have Pro Bowl veteran Julian Love where the Rams have Kam Curl, at deep safety. L.A. has play-making Kamren Kinchens at the other safety. The Seahawks are deciding if Ty Okada or rookie second-round pick Bud Clark will start with Love in the back of the defense.
Ernest Jones at middle linebacker is the centerpiece of what the Seahawks do on defense. The Rams sure wish they still had him. They let Jones leave after he won a Super Bowl with them, entering the final year of his rookie contract years ago. Rams fifth-year inside linebacker Nick Landman is solid and got what Jones didn’t from L.A., a second contract. But he’s not Jones’ caliber at tackling or leading the entire linebacker unit and defense.
The Seahawks’ defensive line is better, though older, at the top of the depth chart. DeMarcus Lawrence returns at age 34 for his 13th NFL season after winning his first Super Bowl after 11 years in Dallas. Williams turned 32 this month. He’s readying for his 12th season in the league.
Inside on the D-line, Jarran Reed is 33. Byron Murphy became an every-down force last season, just his second in the NFL. Rylie Mills missed the first four months of the season recovering from torn ACL in his knee that put most of his rookie season on layaway. Mills had his first career sack in the Super Bowl. Macdonald is moving Jared Ivey, a 6-foot-6 outside linebacker as an undrafted rookie last season, to more defensive-end duty for his second year.
Rams defensive ends Brandon Fiske and Kobie Turner are entering their second and third NFL seasons. The nose tackle is former Seahawk Poona Ford. He’s entering his ninth year and is L.A.’s most experienced D-lineman.
Brimming with confidence that his ways work, wondrously, Macdonald for his third Seahawks season is adding new defensive fronts and new schemes.
Stafford is an injury away from ruining the Rams’ grand plan to push for another Super Bowl before he retires. He missed much of last preseason with back issues. Again, he’s 38. Darnold is 28.
Here’s another thing: The Seahawks and Rams don’t play for the first time this coming season until Christmas night, at Lumen Field. Their second meeting of the 2026 season is week 18, the regular-season finale.
That’s six months of roster decisions, injuries, training camp, the preseason and more than a dozen games that count before the Seahawks are truly focused on the Rams. And vice versa.
‘We’ll adjust accordingly’
So, no, the sky was not falling at team headquarters Renton the day the Rams got Garrett. Or since.
“Yeah, you hear about what’s going on. We’ve got TVs on. And we’ve got the social-media-verse. So, yeah,” Macdonald said this month speaking to 710 AM radio. “Getting up to speed on everything.
“It’s like, there’s so much that has to happen between now and when we even start playing games. Like, ‘OK, great.’ Myles is a great player. He was in Cleveland when I was coaching (through 2023) for the Ravens (who played the Browns twice each season inside the AFC North).
“Jared Verse is a great player,” Macdonald said. “We’ve gone against him. And now he’s going to be playing for the Browns.
“So,” Macdonald said, chuckling at all this hubbub over Garrett to L.A., “we’ll adjust accordingly.”
This story was originally published June 24, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Analysis: Rams+Myles Garrett=Super Bowl faves. But are Seahawks still better?."
