ESPN - On Sunday, the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots will meet in Super Bowl LX. But we might as well call it the Explosive Play Bowl.

The big play has always mattered, but in the past few years, NFL games have become battlefields between teams trying to create and prevent explosive plays. Defenses, tormented by quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen, have leaned into Vic Fangio- style philosophies and continued to raise their rates of two-high safety looks, funneling teams toward the run and short passes. Teams played two-deep shells more than 45% of the time on early downs in 2025, up from 38% in 2020 and 35% in 2017.

Offenses have evolved too. They’ve taken what the defense has given, running the ball more often and with more efficiency than in past years. Quarterbacks have been forced to make small profits and take the safer pass. With a leaguewide increase in willingness to go for it on fourth down, third-and-short has become an opportunity to hit those explosives, while third-andmedium has become a situation where the run is still in play.

The league’s rule changes have also altered the way teams play offense. The move to a dynamic kickoff and placing touchbacks at the 30-yard line (in 2024) and 35-yard line (in 2025) have made it more difficult to play the field position game as a defense. The average drive after a kickoff starts with 69.3 yards to go for a touchdown, 5 full yards ahead of where it was five years ago.

The league also changed the rules for preparing K-balls during the week, which has combined with better technique and a generation of stronger-legged kickers to create compressed fields. Even as recently as 15 years ago, NFL teams were punting if their drives were stopped short of the opposing team’s 35-yard line. Now they’re going for it on fourth down once the ball crosses their own 40, and they’re in field goal range when they cross the opposing team’s 40. Kickers hit 60.6% of their attempts from 55 yards or more this season, up from 48.1% in 2020.

All this has created a league where explosive plays are the great differentiator. Manufacture one explosive play on offense after a kickoff, and you’re probably already in field goal range. Successful defenses either force a ton of takeaways or stall the opposing offense from hitting a big play, trusting

that they’ll come up with a sack, force a penalty or produce a negative play to throw the offense off-schedule. Great offenses either force teams out of the two-high world by running the football too effectively and have quarterbacks who can break defenses down by using their legs or reliably hitting throws into narrow windows downfield. Having an uncoverable receiver or two helps.

Teams that produce more explosive plays than their opposition have won 61.2% of the time. Teams that win the turnover battle -- the classic, traditional measure of playing smart football -- have won 59.1% of the time. The Patriots (plus-3) and Seahawks (minus-3) ran turnover margins toward the middle of the pack this season.

It should be no surprise then that the best teams at creating and stopping explosive plays made it through the postseason. In terms of explosive-play differential -- the gap between the rate at which teams generated explosive plays and prevented their opposition from doing the same -- each of the four teams in the conference championship games ranked in the top five during the regular season. The Rams created explosives 12.6% of the time on offense and allowed teams to make their own only 9.5% of the time on defense, with that resulting 3.1% difference being the third-best mark in the league. The Packers (3.2%) were second, and the Broncos (2.3%) were fifth.

The Patriots were in fourth at 2.8%, buoyed by a leaguebest explosive creation rate of 13.6% on offense. And the Seahawks, who will be favored on Sunday, outpaced everyone. Their 4.7% explosive-play differential was the best mark in the NFL and the ninth-best figure posted by any team of the past 25 years. And they were truly elite on the defensive side of the ball, meaning we’ll get the league’s best offense at creating explosive plays versus the league’s best defense at stopping them Sunday.

Of course, one-game variance can swamp regular- season stats. The six best teams by explosive-play differential over the past 25 years all made it to the Super Bowl; they all lost. A Patriots defense that was ordinary during the regular season by advanced metrics has allowed just six explosives through three postseason games while playing a series of compromised, injury-impacted offenses. The Seahawks gave up 12 explosives to the Rams in the NFC Championship Game.

In this postseason, we’ve seen individual games decided by unexpected injuries, fumble luck, missed kicks and ill-timed weather systems. One of those unpredictable factors might decide Sunday’s game too. All things being equal, though, this should be a fun Super Bowl matchup of two of the league’s explosive-play kings in 2025 (6:30 p.m. ET, NBC). Whoever manages to win that battle in Santa Clara, California, should be the favorite to take home the Lombardi Trophy. Let’s see if we can figure out who might have the inside track.

There’s a chance we get a high-scoring game, but I would expect that to come from the offenses being handed short fields by their defenses and special teams as opposed to some form of shootout. Then again, we know both of these teams can hit shots downfield, so if the Seahawks get out to an early lead, the Patriots might have no choice but to air it out to get back into the contest.

Sunday evening will tell the tale of the two teams and who wants the Super Bowl more.