MVP Candidates Collide as Seahawks’ Sam Darnold, Rams’ Matthew Stafford Prepare to Duel
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Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford and Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold have led top-five offenses through the first 10 weeks of the 2025 season, leading to an exciting showdown between the NFC West rivals in Week 11. [/caption]
With sole possession of first place in the NFC West on the line at SoFi Stadium on Sunday between a pair of 7-2 rivals, two MVP front-runners - one somewhat expected and the other a significant surprise - will take center stage under center for the Seattle Seahawks and Los Angeles Rams in arguably the biggest game of the 2025 season thus far.
Now in his 17th season and fifth with the Rams, Matthew Stafford continues to sling the pigskin from the pocket as well as he has at any point in his illustrious career in Sean McVay’s offense, entering Sunday’s pivotal matchup with a league-high 25 touchdown passes steering one of the NFL’s most potent aerial attacks. On the opposite sideline, Sam Darnold has proven his breakout 2024 campaign with the Vikings wasn’t a fluke, taking another step forward in his career renaissance orchestrating a dynamic Seahawks offense with 17 touchdown passes and a 71.1 percent completion rate.
Through 10 weeks, it’s hard to argue against the inclusion of both Stafford and Darnold as top-three quarterbacks this season leading two of the NFL’s best teams, as they have put up similarly impressive stat lines across the board carving up opposing defenses.
Stacking up favorably against the rest of the league, Stafford and Darnold each rank inside the top 10 in passing yards, yards per attempt, touchdowns, and passer rating, with one or the other sitting at the top of nearly every one of those categories. Among their most jaw-dropping numbers, Stafford has thrown five more touchdowns than the next closest signal caller with Lions veteran Jared Goff nearly getting lapped in the race, while Darnold’s 9.9 yards per attempt sits a full yard above Patriots rising star Drake Maye, the eighth-highest yards per attempt average through nine games in NFL history.
In many ways, Darnold and Stafford have excelled by the same means. They haven’t simply been completing a high percentage of passes via dump offs or check downs or benefiting from a ridiculous amount of yards after the catch from their receivers. They have been mercenaries for hire, particularly on play action, assaulting opposing defenses with impeccable precision dropping downfield bombs week in and week out, making the completion of difficult throws look like a walk in the park.
Per Pro Football Focus, Stafford (23) and Darnold (22) rank first and second in “Big Time Throws” respectively. Further demonstrating their elite arm talent and consistency, they each sit in the top three for such throws on passes traveling 20 or more yards through the air and top the list for both overall yardage as well as total completions on deep balls. Any way you slice it, they have been the two most prolific quarterbacks throwing the football downfield this year, and it’s really not close.
Both quarterbacks have also been quite effective in the intermediate passing game (10-19 yards), each ranking in the top 10 in passing yards, touchdowns, and Big Time Throws. Darnold leads the NFL with 10 passing touchdowns on such throws, while Stafford has posted a fantastic 6.7% Big Time Throw rate.
Regardless of distance, Darnold and Stafford have been near-automatic off play fakes in their respective offenses. Stafford leads the league with 984 passing yards and 12 touchdowns on play action concepts and hasn’t thrown any interceptions on 110 attempts, while Darnold ranks first in yards per attempt (12.9) and Big Time Throw rate (14.1%) off play fakes.
As far as differentiating their respective performances, Darnold’s efficiency as a downfield passer in offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak’s offense has been off the charts, even in comparison to Stafford, who has outpaced the rest of the competition on his own accord. On passes aired out 20 or more yards, with the majority of that damage going to superstar receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Darnold leads the NFL with a stunning 72.4% completion rate, nearly double Stafford’s 46.8% completion rate, while averaging a league-high 25.1 yards per attempt on those throws, almost 10 full yards better than Stafford.
“I've seen a lot of the same things that made him great last year in Minnesota," McVay said of Darnold’s success in Seattle. "I think he's in a really good system. I think he does an excellent job of recognizing whatever the coverages are and being able to get the ball where it should be. You can see he does a great job of playing in time and in rhythm."
To put Darnold’s ridiculous dominance in context compared to rest of the NFL, of the 10 quarterbacks with an average depth of target on deep balls north of 29.4 yards, he’s the only one with a completion rate above 44%, obliterating the rest of the competition with a completion rate exceeding 70% that typically would be reserved for short throws. It’s also worth noting that Darnold has almost as many Big Time Throws as Stafford on just 29 deep pass attempts in comparison to 47 for the Rams quarterback.
On the flip side, Stafford has been a borderline cheat code in the quick strike passing game running McVay’s offense, vastly outperforming Darnold and every other quarterback in the league, for what it’s worth. On throws traveling 10 or fewer yards, he has thrown a whopping 15 touchdowns, six more than the next closest player behind him. According to Pro Football Reference, he leads the NFL with 16 red zone touchdowns, including eight red zone touchdowns to Davante Adams alone, and has yet to throw a pick inside the opposing 20-yard line.
“He’s playing great football,” Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald stated, adding that Stafford is playing the best he’s ever seen him. “He’s decisive, they’re putting him in great situations, diagnosing defenses at a really high level, handling the protections at a high level, they're explosive right now in their pass game, and then they're converting in a lot of those conversion downs too, which keeps drives extended. He’s playing great football.”
In contrast, Darnold has been far more human on short throws with just two touchdowns and three interceptions, tied for the third-most in the league thus far. Misfortune has played into those numbers, as two of those picks came on throws that deflected off of a helmet, but regardless of how they happened, he has had turnover issues in the quick passing game that Stafford has not.
Turnovers in general have been a more significant obstacle for Darnold, as he has thrown four more interceptions than Stafford, including three of them on play action passes. But both players have fumbled five times and according to PFF charting, they have posted equal 2.3% Turnover Worthy Play rates, each ranking in the top 10, suggesting they have each done a quality job protecting the football while still being aggressive attacking downfield as much as any quarterbacks in the league.
Set to face off for the first time this season, Darnold and Stafford share plenty of similarities in how they play the quarterback position, albeit it with somewhat differing styles. Both players do a fine job of unloading the football quickly to help out their offensive lines, ranking sixth and ninth in average time to throw respectively despite their frequent downfield attempts. As a result, it shouldn’t come as a surprise both players rank in the top seven in pressure to sack percentage and have each been sacked 14 or fewer times in nine games.
In the play action passing game, while Darnold understandably is a bit more spry than the aging Stafford at this stage of his career and offers more from a running standpoint comparatively, both quarterbacks excel on bootleg concepts moving the pocket and launch point. As McVay noted, Darnold’s ability to improvise and the connection he has with Seattle’s receivers in such situations has been especially impressive.
"He can activate all parts of the field and then some really cool stuff happens when he goes off-schedule. He has the athleticism to be able to buy time, keep his eyes down the field. You can see there's a rapport with his skill players that they're able to work off of him.”
Darnold has also made strides in regard to pocket presence while developing eyes on the back of his helmet since struggling in that regard earlier in his career, though he’s not quite on the same level yet as Stafford, whose propensity for zipping fastballs from every arm angle imaginable as well as completing no-look passes on the regular have become something of legend over the years.
Even with those slight differences in their methods to the madness, so to speak, there’s no denying Darnold and Stafford both have been playing at the top of their game steering explosive top-five scoring offenses and each will present substantial challenges for the Seahawks and Rams to deal with defensively on Sunday. If either quarterback has time to throw and get the ball downfield, bad things tend to happen for opposing secondaries, and even if pressure gets to them, they have each demonstrated the ability to both create additional time and unload accurate throws under duress.
With so much hanging in the balance, including a potential top seed in the NFC, the quarterback who manages to make the fewest mistakes while still sticking to the script of aggressively pushing the ball downfield likely will be the one celebrating a win in a game with the thinnest margin for error.
