It wasn’t clear what was more impressive from the Los Angeles Rams’ 21-19 victory over the Seattle Seahawks in Week 11.
Was it the Rams picking off Seattle quarterback Sam Darnold four times? Or was it Seattle having a chance at a walk-off field goal despite all those Darnold donations?
The Week 16 rematch in Seattle might not be sufficient for these NFC West rivals, who could easily meet for a third time in the playoffs, with much more at stake.
The Pick Six column zooms in on those four Darnold picks, enlisting a veteran NFL coach to find patterns across all 11 Darnold interceptions in an otherwise stellar season for the reborn veteran passer. Seattle, like Darnold’s Minnesota team last season, looks like a Super Bowl contender, if only the quarterback can play better when it matters most.
Those interceptions were not the only takeaways from a Rams-Seahawks game with major implications in the NFC. The full menu:
• Rams-Seahawks takeaways
• Josh Allen tops Betrayal Index
• Ben Johnson vs. Kevin O’Connell
• DPOY case for Kyle Hamilton
• Kenny Easley’s unknown legacy
• Two-minute drill: Improved Chiefs
1. Darnold’s four interceptions doomed Seattle, but the Seahawks nearly won anyway. Here are my top five takeaways
Takeaway No. 1: The panic gene is part of Darnold’s DNA until he proves otherwise.
Darnold took nine sacks against the Rams in the playoffs last season. Those were not all his fault, of course, but they fed the narrative surrounding his big-game readiness. Darnold took no sacks Sunday, but this was his third career game with exactly zero touchdown passes and four picks, more than anyone else since 2000 (there have been 56 such games total).
“Sam is just going to have that in him for life,” one veteran coach said. “He will play great. He will play good. Then he is going to have those plays. The problem is, when you get established as a playoff team, everyone is scared to death that is going to happen.”
A different coach flipped through Darnold’s interceptions this season and saw a quarterback who holds the ball too long and/or plays hero ball under duress.
On the first interception Sunday, which leads the highlight package above, this coach said: “Here, he thinks he is Aaron Rodgers. He is going to fall away and do a wrist flick. At least he made the tackle.”
SHARK IN THE WATER!
📺 @NFLonFOX | #RamsHouse pic.twitter.com/Kyhn1DbH3B
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) November 16, 2025
On the second interception, featured above: “Trying to hit the speed out, and he underthrows it. He is holding the ball. You gotta throw it.”
KAM SAID MAKE IT A DOUBLE!
📺 @NFLonFOX | #RamsHouse pic.twitter.com/oeWCRovYok
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) November 16, 2025
On the third interception (above): “Jittery. Fiddling with the ball. He stares it down, and the safety jumps all over it.” (Color commentator and retired NFL tight end Greg Olsen said on the broadcast that Darnold likely expected his target, tight end Elijah Arroyo, to bend his route farther inside.)
FOURTH PICK OF THE DAY!
📺 @NFLonFOX | #RamsHouse pic.twitter.com/2FbV0hq8rQ
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) November 16, 2025
On the fourth interception (above): “Just complete panic. No reason to throw this. We are jumping like Roger Staubach throwing to Golden Richards.”
As the other coach put it: “I don’t think anyone is coaching jump passes anymore.”
Opponents are clearly aware of Darnold’s tendencies.
“The rush contains him, and he wants to get rid of the ball, and he’s flinching up,” said Rams safety Kam Kinchens, who snagged the first and third interceptions. “He don’t want to get sacked. He’s just trying to get the ball out of his hands, so that’s when I knew there was an opportunity.”
Darnold will have to live with this narrative until he disproves it.
Takeaway No. 2: Sean McVay and Mike Macdonald were not the only coaches in this game. How about a nod to Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula?
The Rams jumped one spot to third in defensive EPA per play after collecting more EPA off turnovers (21.9) in this game than any McVay-era defense since the final game of the 2018 season, a span of 122 total games.
The performance against Seattle upstaged the much-anticipated matchup between McVay and Macdonald, the play-calling head coaches from opposite sides of the ball. Shula’s defense now ranks higher than McVay’s offense, which is sixth after a rough game against the Seahawks.
Takeaway No. 3: Olsen was right.
Olsen, serving as the No. 2 analyst for Fox, kept saying before the game that defenses needed to use pass-oriented personnel against the Seahawks’ heavier offensive looks, or else Darnold would keep shredding their coverages.
The Rams joined Houston as the only Seattle opponents this season to deploy five defensive backs more frequently than four when the Seahawks played with one back and two tight ends.
Two of the Rams’ 10 nickel defense plays against 12 personnel produced the two biggest EPA swings of the game: Kinchens’ interceptions in the first (+7.2 EPA) and third (+5.5) quarters. Those plays were worth far more than the single big run the Rams allowed on those plays, a 25-yarder by Kenneth Walker in the second quarter (1.6 EPA).
Takeaway No. 4: The special teams irony was rich.
The Seahawks rank first and the Rams rank last in special teams EPA, so it was notable when Rams punter Ethan Evans pinned Seattle inside its own 1-yard line on a 50-yard punt with 1:50 remaining in the fourth quarter, and when Seattle’s Jason Myers was penalized for kicking off short of the landing zone in the second quarter (in that case, Seattle’s defense produced a three-and-out and the Seahawks scored next, so no damage was done).
Takeaway No. 5: Dec. 18 is circled on the calendar.
Regulation nearly expired on Darnold as he completed his final pass, setting up Meyers’ 61-yard try at the game-winner. The kick wasn’t close, but the final score was — and surprisingly so, given all those Darnold interceptions and the Seahawks’ inability to finish drives with touchdowns (1 of 4 in the red zone). I think it attests to Seattle’s strength through all three phases of its roster, quarterback play permitting.
The 2013 Denver Broncos, 2000 St. Louis Rams and these current Seahawks are the only teams since 2000 to have a point differential of at least 100 and a negative turnover differential through the first 10 games of a season. It’s a tough combination to pull off.
Those Peyton Manning-era Broncos were plus-143 in points and minus-2 in turnovers. Those Kurt Warner-era Rams were plus-126 and minus-10. These Darnold-quarterback Seahawks are plus-101 and minus-7. Those long-ago teams were elite. So are these Seahawks.
But until they beat the Rams, and until Darnold proves himself in big games, the doubts will linger. It will take more than teammates’ profanity-laced declarations — “Sam has had us in every f—ing game,” linebacker and former Ram Ernest Jones IV said — to change minds.
2. Josh Allen accounted for six touchdowns in Buffalo’s thrilling victory over Tampa Bay. This wasn’t necessarily what Sean McDermott had in mind.
Allen tops the 2025 Betrayal Index after carrying Buffalo to a 44-32 victory over the Buccaneers. He ranks first among 30 qualifying quarterbacks in EPA per start (9.4). But the support provided by his defense and special teams (-2.9 EPA per start) is only 25th-best in relation to how the corresponding units have produced for the other 29 QBs with at least six starts this season.
The gap between those disparate rankings ties Allen with Dallas’ Dak Prescott as the most betrayed QB in the league this season. Both are generally producing at high levels but having a harder time winning for reasons beyond their direct control.
This wasn’t the plan in Buffalo.
Defensive-minded head coaches generally want to win with a strong run game and defense, limiting exposure to turnovers.
The Bills under coach Sean McDermott have trended toward that offensive vision since McDermott replaced Ken Dorsey with Joe Brady as coordinator midway through 2023. They have reduced the team’s pass rate from 59 percent under Dorsey to 51 percent under Brady. The turnover rate has fallen from 16 percent of drives to 7.9 percent.
It’s the defensive component that has fallen off a cliff (the special teams have also struggled, but that has gone on longer). A defense that ranked seventh in EPA per play two seasons ago fell to 14th last season and 22nd through Week 11 this season.
The trend jumps off the chart below and will make it harder for the Bills to break through in the playoffs.
On the bright side for the Bills, Kansas City and Baltimore are both 5-5, and the Buffalo defense, though flawed, still owns the second-best performance of the season by any team against Kansas City on an EPA per-play basis.
3. As for that NFC North matchup between offensive maestro head coaches Ben Johnson and Kevin O’Connell, well, how about those defenses?
It’s been fascinating to watch Johnson and O’Connell navigate their quarterback situations before and after Johnson’s Bears pulled off a 19-17 victory over O’Connell’s Vikings.
Johnson, 7-3 in his first season as Chicago’s coach, has shown relatively tough love publicly for Caleb Williams, the precocious No. 1 pick he inherited. He challenged Williams’ body language in the offseason. When the media asked about an exciting comeback victory over Cincinnati in Week 9, Johnson tempered the enthusiasm by noting that playing “within the rhythm and the timing of the concepts” is the goal for his young quarterback, who reportedly resisted coaching under a less empowered staff last season.
“To be honest with you, I think Ben is frustrated with him,” an opposing defensive coach said. “Caleb doesn’t play on time and doesn’t do the things that allow that offense to get to the next level that Ben is used to. Ben was able to scheme up max-protection things for Jared (Goff) in Detroit and run guys open. This guy can’t do that, so now it is all (off-schedule) ball, which is uncontrollable for a coach.”
O’Connell, 4-6 in his fourth season as the Vikings’ coach and first with J.J. McCarthy as his starter, has offered comfort for his quarterback, pushing back against those who suggest these early games foreshadow trouble. After McCarthy struggled again Sunday, missing wide-open receivers with regularity, O’Connell suggested in the most generous terms imaginable that his QB might have failed to maximize opportunities.
“Obviously, you feel certain things when you’re calling things, seeing coverages kind of express themselves and you think maybe there are some opps out there,” O’Connell said when asked about McCarthy’s accuracy, “but I always have to really evaluate it from the standpoint of what it looked like on the tape.”
When O’Connell does study the tape, he’ll see a frustrated Jefferson failing to reach for a pass so errant, it sailed over the receiver’s head. He’ll also see two Bears defenders so eager to pick off one underthrown ball, they collided with sufficient enough force to send one of them to the sideline for a stint.
O’Connell said he was “proud” of the team’s run game, felt good about the pass protection and thought the team was a couple “pitches and catches” away from possibly prevailing. In other words …
“The receivers are visually frustrated, and they are open all over the tape,” another opposing coach said heading into Sunday. “All of them — (Jalen) Nailor, (Jordan) Addison, (Justin) Jefferson, the tight end (T.J. Hockenson). That should be a Cincinnati offense, but all you hear from Minnesota is about how rosy and great it is there. What I see is a quarterback who feels like he is really frustrating the play caller.”
A former head coach cautioned against overreacting, recalling his own experiences with ugly offensive games inside a division, where opponents know each other well. Bigger picture, this coach thinks Williams has a chance to be a top-10 quarterback, and perhaps even special, if he buys into Johnson’s coaching and develops a better feel for when to go off-script.
That’s essentially what Johnson is saying, whether or not he’s frustrated after averaging 4.4 yards per play, as his Bears did Sunday.
“That is what he’s gotta say, but you have to consider Caleb as a rookie, because he wasn’t buying in before,” this coach said. “He is learning how to play. There are a lot of games you are going to play in like the week before, when he ran (17) yards for the winning touchdown.”
4. Kyle Hamilton is not Kenny Easley, but he’s got one thing going for him that Easley never did — and it might save the Ravens’ season (again).
Kenny Easley, who died Saturday, dominated the NFL from the strong safety position, which is not easy to do. The Hall of Famer and his Seattle teammates from 1981 to 1987 wondered what might have been if the team had let him play free safety or otherwise moved him around the formation.
Instead, Easley saw his ball production slide after a 1984 Defensive Player of the Year season in which he led the NFL in interceptions (10) while striking fear into ball carriers as a heavy hitter.
It’s too early to say whether Hamilton, the Ravens’ fourth-year safety, will join Easley with a bust in Canton. He’s on the right track as a first-team Associated Press All-Pro in 2023, a second-team choice last season and a Pro Bowl pick both years.
Unlike Easley, Hamilton will not wonder whether his team maximized his usage. The 6-foot-4, 218-pound “safety” has, over the past five Baltimore games, played 110 snaps at slot corner, 100 at inside linebacker, 63 as an edge defender, eight as an outside corner and eight at his listed position, safety, according to Pro Football Focus via TruMedia.
In 2024, Hamilton moved farther from the line of scrimmage in the second half of the season to shore up the Ravens’ pass defense. This season, since Baltimore acquired safety Alohi Gilman in a trade with the Chargers before Week 6, Hamilton has moved nearer the action, shoring up a Baltimore run defense that had been historically bad by the franchise’s standards, and racking up splash plays.
Against Cleveland on Sunday, Hamilton tackled Quinshon Judkins for a 2-yard loss from the edge position. He recorded a sack and forced fumble after lining up at inside linebacker. He made a tackle for a 1-yard gain on third-and-7 from the slot corner position. Those three plays contributed 4.6 EPA to the Ravens’ cause in a game the team won by seven points.
EPA aside, Hamilton’s most impressive play might have been his other tackle for loss. Aligned as an inside linebacker, he jolted seven-time Pro Bowl guard and 320-pounder Joel Bitonio two yards backward into Judkins before wrapping up the running back.
Hamilton is the only player in the league with at least 80 snaps as an edge defender, 130 as an inside linebacker, 140 as a slot corner and 190 as a safety, per PFF. Derwin James of the Chargers, labeled the best safety in NFL history by his hyperbolic coach, Jim Harbaugh, comes closer than any other defender to meeting that criteria this season. Jeremy Chinn of the Raiders checks some of the boxes.
The shift toward Hamilton playing nearer the line of scrimmage, including in four consecutive victories, tracks with improved play on defense for Baltimore, albeit against struggling offenses (Chicago, Miami, Minnesota and Cleveland).
The Ravens, now 5-5 and favored to win the AFC North, draw the Jets next, followed by a finishing stretch that could feature two games against Joe Burrow, two against Aaron Rodgers (pending further information about his left wrist injury), one against Drake Maye and one against Jordan Love.
5. One of the greatest athletes in NFL history died Saturday. Here’s what you should know about Kenny Easley.
Easley died after a 37-year battle with kidney failure that hit almost as hard as Easley did when news of his condition broke in 1988. He was 66.
Easley was so great that other great players looked up to him, but because he played in the remote Seattle market long before the internet, and because his career was cut short by kidney failure at age 29, he never really got his due, reaching the Hall of Fame belatedly as a seniors candidate.
The great Ronnie Lott said he aspired to be like Easley. Todd Christensen, the first tight end to record more than one season with at least 90 receptions, had this to say about Easley during a 2002 conversation: “It goes without saying what Ronnie did in his career, but in all candor — and this is no knock on Ronnie — Kenny Easley was a better football player.”
RIP Kenny Easley, an all-time great talent even by #NFL standards. Here is what @RonnieLottHOF said about him during 2002 conversation. pic.twitter.com/zlimTVYZVv
— Mike Sando (@SandoNFL) November 15, 2025
Easley, 6-foot-3 and 210 pounds, was part of the historic 1981 draft class featuring three Hall of Fame defenders among the top eight picks in Lawrence Taylor (No. 2), Easley (4) and Lott (8), plus Mike Singletary (38), Howie Long (48) and Rickey Jackson (51). Dennis Smith, one of the biggest hitters in league history, was also in that class at No. 15.
Easley was a freak athlete among freak athletes. He was at once the most feared hitter in the NFL, its leader in interceptions and shifty enough to average 12.1 yards on 16 punt returns one season (then-coach Chuck Knox said he’d never had a starter volunteer for punt-return duties in a pinch, as Easley did in 1984, when he led the NFL with 10 interceptions, two of them returned for touchdowns).
A scratch golfer, Easley would walk nine holes at the up-and-down track at Indian Canyon Golf Course near the Seahawks’ old training camp site in eastern Washington at dawn, then participate in grueling two-a-day practices under Knox back when hydration was a word associated more with material science than getting enough to drink.
Terry Donahue, Easley’s old coach at UCLA, said he thought Easley could have been the sixth man on the basketball team there. Anyone who saw Easley play tennis thought he could have excelled in that sport as well.
Then, he was suddenly finished.
April 22, 1988 seemed like just another Friday until Easley, whose production had declined as his health deteriorated and offenses schemed away from him, submitted to a routine physical exam to facilitate his trade from Seattle to the then-Phoenix Cardinals.
Tests conducted by the Cardinals showed Easley, who at one point was taking 16-20 ibuprofen tablets daily to overcome an ankle injury, had a creatinine toxicity level of 22, where anything above 10 was considered life-threatening (1.2 is considered high for men with average muscle mass). Doctors were surprised Easley was alive, let alone playing, with such a condition.
Easley was forced to retire at 29 and undergo a kidney transplant. He sued team doctors, team trainers and the maker of Advil, eventually reaching a settlement. Embittered, he cut ties to the Seahawks until the team, under new ownership in the early 2000s, reached out and mended the relationship.
“The reason (Easley) doesn’t get his due is just like Earl Campbell,” Lott said in an interview years ago. “They didn’t get that chance to play on a Super Bowl team. I know for a fact that the Niners, had they owned the fourth pick (in the 1981 draft), they would have taken Kenny Easley over Ronnie Lott.
“That’s one of those things in sports, we see it all the time. We see great, great players that because of not winning or going to the Super Bowl, doesn’t put them in that category. And yet the guys who go to the Super Bowl want to be like him. The guys around the league want to be like him. That’s what you take away.”
6. Two-minute drill: The Chiefs are improved in 2025
Congrats to the Chiefs on the major improvements they’ve made over the first 10 games, compared to last season. This team is clearly better in just about every area, as the table below shows.
There is the small detail of the team’s 5-5 record, which does not quite measure up to the 9-1 mark from last season. A team that finished last season 11-0 in games decided by eight or fewer points has an 0-5 mark in those games this season. Regression is real, even for a team with an all-time great coach, Andy Reid, and an all-time great quarterback, Patrick Mahomes.
The drop has Kansas City seeded ninth in the AFC, sandwiched between Houston and Baltimore, who are also 5-5. The Chiefs remain just one game out of the playoff picture, behind seventh-seeded Jacksonville is 6-4, although the Jaguars have the head-to-head advantage. But the clock is ticking. Four of their remaining games are against teams ahead of them in the AFC standings.
• Denver, anyone? The Broncos, 22-19 winners at home over Kansas City in Week 11, are a version of the 2024 Chiefs. They are 7-2 in games decided by eight or fewer points and the only team to play in nine games that close this season. They’ve won eight in a row by a combined 61 points.
For the season, Denver owns a plus-2 point differential across the first three quarters. That ranks 17th in the league. The Broncos are plus-63 in fourth quarters, which leads the league.
How seriously are you taking them?
• Hitting pause on Eagles: NBC’s Cris Collinsworth said after Philly’s 16-9 victory over Detroit that he suspected the Eagles’ offense would come to life later in the season. Why would that happen? The line is diminished and, as one coach from a different team put it, the offense looks more like a group effort than the inspired vision of a seasoned play caller.
• Myles Garrett’s charge: With four sacks against Baltimore on Sunday, the Browns’ Myles Garrett has seven career regular-season games with at least three. That’s tied for fifth-most through the first 127 games of a career since sacks became an official stat in 1982, and also since 1960, which is how far back Pro Football Reference’s unofficial sack data goes.
That star-studded leaderboard shows some Hall of Famers, and also Easley’s former Seattle teammate, Jacob Green.
Garrett is one shy of his career-high sack total (16, in 2021 and 2022) and 7.5 from the single-season record held by Michael Strahan and T.J. Watt with seven games to play.
• Dolphins alive: The Dolphins have won three of four, including two in a row since firing general manager Chris Grier. The road from their 4-7 record to a possible 8-7 mark is paved by games against the Saints, Jets, Steelers and Bengals.
The playoffs aren’t a realistic expectation, as The Athletic‘s playoff simulator lays out starkly.
But the projection model gives the Dolphins an outside shot at 9-8 (five percent) and a decent shot at 8-9 (18 percent), with the most likely outcomes being 7-10 (32 percent) or 6-11 (29 percent).
At their best under coach Mike McDaniel, the Dolphins scored 10 touchdowns on offense to hang a 70-20 victory over the Denver Broncos early in the 2023 season.
What happened Sunday in Madrid was nothing like that, but the Dolphins, their grit questioned more than once under McDaniel, found a way to win ugly. Good for them.
How ugly was it?
Before Sunday, NFL teams were 1-65 this season in games when they finished with negative EPA on both offense and defense. Minnesota’s Week 9 victory over Detroit had been the only exception.
The Dolphins joined those exclusive (?) ranks with their 16-13 victory over Washington. They had been 0-11 in those games under McDaniel previously and 6-89 (.063) in them overall since 2000, per TruMedia.
Jack Jones’ interception of backup Commanders quarterback Marcus Mariota to open overtime was the pivotal play in the end, but Washington might have lost this game on special teams. Commanders returner Mike Sainristil muffed a punt in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter, and kicker Matt Gay missed from 56 yards with 15 seconds left in regulation (Gay also missed from 51 in the second quarter).
• What stood out about Maye: New England’s 27-14 victory over the Jets on Thursday featured a couple of plays by second-year quarterback Drake Maye that stood out relative to Maye’s 2024 draft peers. The play Maye made along the sideline when he converted an apparent scramble into a short touch pass for a first down showed great feel for the game and situational awareness. The touchdown pass Maye threw to TreVeyon Henderson was another example of Maye making a pass with touch and feel instead of slinging it on a rope.
Those are the types of plays we aren’t seeing as much, if at all, from Michael Penix Jr. and even from Caleb Williams, who would seem to possess that ability.
• What Panthers needed: Bryce Young had never passed for more than 328 yards in an NFL game before lighting up the Atlanta Falcons for 448 yards and three touchdowns in a 30-27 victory Sunday.
It was exactly what the Panthers needed to see after a three-game run in which Young, the first pick in the 2023 draft, had failed to reach 6.0 yards per pass attempt.
Young has 21 of those sub-6.0 starts since 2023, nine more than anyone else. Whatever gains he had made after returning from his benching before Week 9 last season were shrinking in the rearview mirror. Sunday sparked at least some hope.
• Shedeur’s debut: Shedeur Sanders completed 4 of 16 passes with an interception after replacing the injured fellow rookie Dillon Gabriel behind center for Cleveland. It was the sort of debut that, for one week at least, validated Terry Bradshaw’s preseason contention that Sanders is not an NFL-caliber quarterback. The irony is that Sanders and Bradshaw are the only quarterbacks since 1970 to complete 4 of 16 passes in their debut games, albeit 55 years apart.
Bradshaw completed 4 of 16 passes for 70 yards and an interception for the Steelers in 1970.
Sanders passed for 47 yards on his four completions against the Ravens.
This was the 187th time a quarterback attempted at least 16 passes in his first career game since 1970, per Pro Football Reference. None completed fewer passes than Sanders completed.
Scott Stankavage completed 4 of 18 in his debut with Denver in 1984, his only appearance in a non-strike season.
