Are the NFC West’s Big Names Already Frauds?

The Rams entered 2026 as the consensus Super Bowl favourite, boasting reigning MVP Matt Stafford, a blockbuster offseason acquisition of Myles Garrett (for Jared Verse plus a 2027 first-rounder), and new corner Trent McDuffie. Six weeks in, everything that felt like a near-promise has gone badly wrong.

Currently ranking 17th in scoring offence and 21st in scoring defense, they’re a long way away from the promise their price tag held just over a month ago. True, they’re a little thinner on the ground right now with Davante Adams, Myles Garrett and Blake Grupe all struggling with significant injuries, but when The Rams lost 18–16 at home to the Cardinals and Vacchiano described them as an ‘overrated’ team, everything really started to feel like more than a blip.

On paper, total offence and total defense look okay, but it’s not turning into anything worth tuning in for. With so little movement on either side of the ball, it’s getting harder and harder to post any convincing argument in favor of The Rams’ chances.

Then there’s none other than the defending Super Bowl champions: Seattle Seahawks. The team has dropped two straight, first to the 49ers and then the Broncos in Denver on Thursday night, despite starting the season strong on the NFL betting tables. This time, fans feel the culprit is clear: Sam Darnold is giving the ball away at an alarming rate. With his return from a glute injury freshly behind him, the quarterback has thrown seven interceptions in the space of just four games – a fact that feels increasingly at-odds with the teams’ first-rate defense. For fans, this is arguably the most frustrating way for the season to begin: an offence that is actively sabotaging one of the league’s great defensive units.

Darnold is under no illusion about the burden he’s currently placing on the field, stating that he knew it ‘wasn’t fair’ to the defense to keep turning the ball over.

Of course, the full weight of the team’s performance shouldn’t be dropped on Darnold’s shoulders, and Cooper Kupp recently came out in defense of the quarterback, stating that the team weren’t ‘doing good enough offensively to get him into a flow’.

However, for fans, attributing blame to just one player – at this point in the season, in particular – probably feels like the preferable option. After all, with a third of the season’s score lines set in stone now and a real question mark hanging over performance, accepting that the issue is endemic and spread between an entire offensive line doesn’t seem quite as attractive a prospect as parsing all the blame onto one element of that line.

If that were the case, then the Seattle Seahawks would suddenly find themselves staring into the same chasm as The Rams. How long can a team operate at such a glaring loss – with so many balls intercepted and scoring against them – without being labelled an overrated ‘also ran’ in the next run-up to the Superbowl? And, for the Seattle Seahawks, how long can that Superbowl Ring feel like a protective bubble against the level of criticism being thrown against The Rams?