Seattle Seahawks

The Cowboys didn’t make the playoffs, but they will have seven Pro Bowlers.

The NFL announced that KaVontae Turpin will play in his third consecutive Pro Bowl Games. He replaces Seattle’s Rashid Shaheed as the kick returner.

Shaheed will be busy with Super Bowl preparations this week.

Turpin becomes the only return specialist in team history to make multiple Pro Bowls as a kick returner.

Hall of Famer Devin Hester made four Pro Bowls as a returner, while Josh Cribbs had three. Former Panthers returner Michael Bates, who played for Dallas in 2003, had five Pro Bowl selections in his career.

Turpin set Cowboys records for most net yards with 2,351 this season, surpassing DeMarco Murray (2,261 in 2014). Most of Turpin’s yardage came from kickoff returns, where he set the Cowboys’ single-season records for attempts with 69 and yards with 1,814, both of which led the NFL this season.

Dak Prescott, George Pickens, Quinnen Williams, Brandon Aubrey and Tyler Smith were the team’s original Pro Bowlers, and tight end Jake Ferguson previously was added to the NFC roster as an alternate.

Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald had a generally positive update on his team’s injury situation a day after the team qualified for the Super Bowl by beating the Rams 31-27 in the NFC Championship Game.

Quarterback Sam Darnold has been dealing with an oblique injury for the last couple of weeks, but had a stellar game against the Rams and Macdonald said he’s dealing with some soreness while making an appearance on Seattle Sports on Monday. Left tackle Charles Cross is in the same boat with a foot injury that’s been bothering him for a while, but Macdonald was not concerned about either player.

“There’s a couple other things we’re going to work through, but nothing major, to our knowledge,” Macdonald said, via Brady Henderson of ESPN.com.

The other current injury issues include fullback Brady Russell’s hand injury and linebacker Drake Thomas’s shoulder injury. The team will begin providing more updates on everyone’s condition with Wednesday’s injury report.

Lions quarterback Jared Goff has been named a Pro Bowler for the fifth time in his career.

The Lions announced on Monday that Goff has been added to the NFC roster as a replacement for Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold. Darnold will not be available because he will be preparing to play in the Super Bowl.

Goff’s own bid to make it to Super Bowl for the second time in his career ended when the Lions failed to make the playoffs. He was 393-of-578 for 4,564 yards, 34 touchdowns and eight interceptions while starting all 17 games for Detroit.

Matthew Stafford and Dak Prescott were the other quarterbacks originally selected for the Pro Bowl from the NFC.

Last week, Seahawks receiver Cooper Kupp downplayed the storyline arising from the NFC Championship matchup with his former team, the Rams. On Sunday, Kupp had a major impact on the outcome.

The stat line (four catches, 36 yards, one touchdown) doesn’t do justice to his impact. Beyond the two key catches he made on the drive that pushed a 24-20 score back to an 11-point margin, Kupp’s fourth-quarter catch and dive on third and seven kept the Rams from getting the ball back with more than enough time for a game-winning drive.

After the game, Mike Silver of TheAthletic.com got to work on prospecting for some interesting nuggets about the broader Kupp-Rams relationship. And Silver struck gold.

In the Week 16 showdown between the two teams, which helped determine the location of Sunday’s rubber match, Kupp’s fumble with less than a minute to play in the second quarter ended a potential scoring drive. Then came halftime, and things got spicy.

Citing several unnamed witnesses, Silver reports that, as Rams and Seahawks assistant coaches shared an elevator from the press box to the locker room, a Rams offensive coach “asked which Seattle player had been responsible, and when another replied that it was Kupp, the coach snickered as though he expected the answer.”

Seahawks linebackers coach Chris Partridge became, per Silver, “enraged” by the reaction. Rams defensive pass rush coordinator Drew Wilkins “yell[ed] back” at Partridge. At that point, Partridge “had to be held back by other Seahawks coaches in the packed elevator, averting a possible skirmish.”

News of the incident spread. “It was kind of a thing in our locker room during halftime,” an unnamed Seahawks player told Silver.

And while that game happened more than a month ago, it was surely something the Seahawks remembered on Sunday. It was surely something Kupp, who exited the locker room without speaking to reporters, remembered, too.

“When it ended with the Rams, we weren’t in a good place,” Kupp told Silver earlier this month.

Kupp and the Seahawks are in a great place currently. And while it’s impossible to draw a straight line back to the elevator incident from December 18, it’s reasonable to assume that there was at least a trail of popcorn from that moment to Kupp’s motivation only 38 days later.

In the first 10 games of the 2025 postseason, 15 lead changes happened in the fourth quarter. It’s an all-time record.

There were no fourth-quarter lead changes in either of Sunday’s games. There were no fourth-quarter lead changes because, in both the AFC Championship and NFC Championship, there were zero fourth-quarter points scored.

None. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. The final points scored in Rams-Seahawks happened with 17 minutes remaining. In Patriots-Broncos, 20:29 remained when New England took a 10-7 lead.

That’s 37:29 of total action with no scoring to end the two games.

In Denver, it wasn’t a surprise. The weather took a turn for the treacherous, and neither offense could do anything. In Seattle, the fourth quarter consisted mainly of a long Rams drive that failed on fourth and four from the six, and a clock-churning clincher from the Seahawks that left the Rams without enough time to do much of anything.

Despite the absence of scoring, both games were exciting until the end, or close to it.

Every few years, the NFL makes taunting a “point of emphasis” for the coming season. That’s a kind way of saying to the officials, “You haven’t been doing your jobs properly. Please start doing so.”

And even with taunting and sportsmanship a point of emphasis again in 2025, the game officials still call taunting far too inconsistently. That fact is proven almost every week, when the league imposes fines for taunting fouls that weren’t flagged in real time.

On Sunday, in a key moment of the NFC Championship, the officials flagged Seattle cornerback Riq Woolen for taunting. His conduct was aimed not at any one opponent, but at the Rams’ sideline. Which conjured a memory of the ridiculous taunting call on former Bears defensive end Cassius Marsh for mean-mugging the Steelers’ sideline during a 2021 Monday night game, the last time taunting was a “point of emphasis.”

The 15-yard foul and automatic first down saved the Rams from having to punt while down 11 points with 17:20 to play.

While Woolen crossed the line, the problem is no one truly knows where the line is — and when or if the officials will be policing it in real time. Taunting doesn’t get called on a regular basis. Which sends mixed signals to players and teams about what is and isn’t acceptable. Which sets the stage for a player to surrender to a human moment without realizing that they’re setting themselves up for a foul.

Complicating matters for Woolen was the fact that (if you watch the broadcast closely) his generalized taunt eventually put him in the vicinity of Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford. And Stafford was not pleased. Which worked against Woolen on the very next play, when he was covering Rams receiver Puka Nacua. Stafford targeted Woolen and the eleven-point lead shrunk to four in a flash.

It’s impressive that the Seahawks were able to keep things from snowballing, especially after Woolen and defensive back Nick Emmanwori were jawing on the sideline in the aftermath of the drive. The point for now is that inconsistency in officiating creates plenty of issues, including confusing players, coaches, viewers who don’t know what will, and won’t, spark a flag.

The situation justifies a conversation on whether the whole get-off-my-lawn approach to taunting should be revisited. The league’s thinking is that taunting creates hard feelings that will prompt the tauntee to look for a way to get back at the taunter later in the game, possibly by inflicting a big hit (legal or otherwise).

They say it’s rooted in sportsmanship. The truth is that it comes from the broader concern about player safety. And if one player isn’t looking for a way to take a free shot at another player, the chances of an extra concussion or two landing on the total annual number of head injuries are minimized — which contributes to a valuable P.R. mechanism for arguing that the game is “safer than ever.”

And which in turn justifies the ongoing obsession for an 18th regular-season game.

At some point, however, the league may need to admit that the officials simply can’t (or won’t) pull the trigger on every taunt that happens. And if the league isn’t willing to abandon the no-taunting position, maybe the better approach is to treat taunting like the hip-drop tackle, which is rarely if ever flagged and which is addressed after the fact with fines.

Before the AFC Championship Game got underway on Sunday, there was a report that Broncos quarterbacks coach/pass game coordinator Davis Webb was expected to have a second interview with the Raiders for their head coaching job this week.

That report also indicated that the Bills have interest in interviewing Webb, but the timing of a conversation was contingent on the result of their game against the Patriots. The Bills did not fire Sean McDermott until last week, which meant they did not have a virtual first-round interview with Webb and would have to wait to speak with him until after the Super Bowl if Denver beat New England.

The Patriots won 10-7 on Sunday and that means Webb is now free to interview with any interested teams and could be hired at any time. Per multiple reports, Webb is expected to speak with both the Bills and the Raiders on Monday.

The same is true for Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula, offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur, and offensive pass game coordinator Nate Scheelhaase in the wake of their loss to the Seahawks. Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak has also interviewed for head coaching vacancies and he can have second meetings this week, but no team can hire him until after Super Bowl LX.

The Cardinals and Browns join the Bills and Raiders as teams still looking for head coaches.

Sam Darnold’s redemptive rise began before he joined the Seahawks last year, but the quarterback hit new heights in the last few weeks.

An overtime win over the Rams in Week 16 and a Week 18 wipeout of the 49ers made Seattle the NFC West champs before a rout of the 49ers sent them to the NFC Championship Game against those same Rams. Darnold dealt with an oblique injury all week, but went 25-of-36 for 346 yards and three touchdowns in a 31-27 win that will go down as his finest NFL hour.

It didn’t take long for a reminder of his earlier struggles to surface, however. Darnold began his career as the third overall pick by the Jets in 2018 and the lasting memory of his three years with the team was a four-interception game against the Patriots on a Monday night in 2019. Darnold wore a microphone for that game and was captured telling coaches he was “seeing ghosts” on the field during the 33-0 loss.

During Sunday’s postgame press conference, Darnold was asked about the journey from that point to facing the Patriots again in Super Bowl LX.

“I almost forgot about it, so thanks. No, you’re good,” Darnold said, via a transcript from the team. “I think for me, there was a lot that I didn’t know back then, so I’m just going to continue to learn and grow in this great game. There is a lot of stuff that I can get better from today even. I feel like I missed some throws out there that I shouldn’t miss. There were some things offensively that I feel like we can do better. So we’re always looking to get better. I’m always looking to get better. That’s the great part about this game is you win an NFC Championship and you win games throughout the season, but there is always ways that you can look to get better.”

No one was predicting trips to the Super Bowl for Darnold when he was melting down against New England or when he was struggling with the Panthers, but the door opened for him with the Vikings last year. A late-season swoon marred that comeback, but Darnold kept getting better in Seattle and he could finish his improbable career reinvention at Levi’s Stadium in two weeks.

Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold didn’t show the effects of his oblique injury during the NFC Championship Game, but coach Mike Macdonald said after the game that it had a significant impact on Darnold’s preparation.

After Darnold threw for 346 yards in the Seahawks’ 31-27 win over the Rams, Macdonald praised Darnold and noted that he had done very little on the practice field.

“Three hundred and something yards, three touchdowns, no picks,” Macdonald said of Darnold. “Every time they went and scored again, he came back. He had some big-time throws on third down, two-minute drive, four-minute drive. The guy barely practiced all week. Just really happy for him. he deserves it. He’s been a rock for us all year.”

Officially, Darnold was listed as a limited participant in all three of the Seahawks’ practices last week. But there were no limits on what he could do on Sunday, when he delivered the signature performance of his career.

“It should go down as one of the best performances in playoff history,” Macdonald said.

The Seahawks are the favorites in Super Bowl LX.

Seattle opened as a 3.5-point favorite over New England, and the line quickly moved to 4.5 points as bets came in on the Seahawks.

The Seahawks moneyline is -230, meaning a $230 bet on the Seahawks to win the game would earn $100 if the Seahawks win, while the Patriots are at +190, meaning a $100 bet on the Patriots to win the game would return $190 if New England wins.

The total is set at over/under 46.5 points.

Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold is the betting favorite to win Super Bowl MVP at +130. He’s followed by Patriots quarterback Drake Maye at +235, Seahawks wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba at +550, Seahawks running back Kenneth Walker at +600 and Patriots running back Rhamondre Stevenson at +2500.

Both Super Bowl teams were preseason long shots. Entering the season, the Seahawks’ odds to win the Super Bowl were 60-1 and the Patriots’ odds were 80-1.