Super Bowl 2026 pick and score prediction: Seahawks rematch with Patriots turns into super blowout

SAN FRANCISCO -- After surviving an earthquake on Monday, I've decided I'm officially ready to make my Super Bowl pick. As everyone knows, any time the Super Bowl is in San Francisco, you have to survive at least one earthquake before you can make your pick, so here we are. It's time. 

Actually, forget everything I just wrote, because the Super Bowl isn't even in San Francisco. It's in Santa Clara. Why is the Golden Gate Bridge in the Super Bowl logo? I have no idea. I feel so used.

Anyway, not only is the game in Santa Clara, but the NFL decided to hold Super Bowl Opening Night in San Jose on Monday, so if this pick sounds like an incoherent mess, that's because I wrote it at 1 a.m. PT after attending that event.

The biggest surprise of Opening Night is that I'm 71% sure that I heard Pat Patriot speak Spanish. 

Is that going to have any impact on my Super Bowl pick? Maybe. 

Let's get to the pick and find out. 

Also, since I'll be in San Francisco this week, feel free to start following me on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or EVEN TIKTOK. Yup, I started a TikTok account this week and I already regret it. There's a good chance I'll also eventually regret my Super Bowl pick.

Super Bowl 2026: Ranking every Patriots and Seahawks starter ahead of NFL championship devoid of star power

Pete Prisco

Super Bowl LX pick: New England (17-3) vs. Seattle (16-3)

• Date: Feb. 8 | Time: 6:30 p.m. ET (NBC)
• Location: Levi's Stadium, Santa Clara (California) 

I'm going to go ahead and assume that most of you haven't started planning your Super Bowl parties for next year, but you might want to get on that, because Super Bowl LXI is being played on Valentine's Day. That's right: After taking over Thanksgiving and Christmas, the NFL is now coming for Valentine's Day. Nothing sacred anymore. 

At this point, it's probably too late to change the date of this year's game, but if the NFL was going to play one Super Bowl on Valentine's Day, it should have been this one, because this Super Bowl is all about breakups and finding someone new.

You want a bitter breakup? That's what happened between the Titans and Mike Vrabel. You know the type of breakup where the you never talk to your ex again. That was this. Vrabel hates the Titans. The Patriots played the Titans this year and Vrabel wouldn't even look at Titans owner Amy Adams-Strunk. 

After taking a year away from the dating pool, Vrabel ended up with the Patriots and everything has worked out so far. 

You want an amicable breakup? That was what the Seahawks did with Pete Carroll. Everyone has been in a relationship like this: It runs its course and it's just best for both sides to end it. The Seahawks finally cut ties with Carroll in 2024 and immediately replaced him with Mike Macdonald. The breakup has worked out for everyone involved. Well, except for Carroll. 

You want a breakup that makes no sense? That was the Vikings getting rid of Sam Darnold. This was the kind of breakup where someone gets dumped by someone they still liked, but they immediately upgrade to someone better. Why did the Vikings let Darnold go? I still have no idea. Their decision to let him leave was so bad that they fired their general manager (Kwesi Adofo-Mensah) just five days after Darnold led the Seahawks to the Super Bowl and I don't think that was a coincidence. 

I know what you're thinking right now and it's probably something along the lines of "Breech, your Super Bowl pick is talking so much about breakups that it's starting to sound like a teenage girl's diary. Are you going to make a prediction on this game or not?"

The answer to that is yes. 

The reason we're talking about breakups is because I think that out of those three guys -- Darnold, Vrabel or Macdonald -- one of them is going to decide the Super Bowl. And I have a feeling it's going to be Macdonald. 

Since being hired by the Seahawks in 2024, Macdonald has absolutely dominated young quarterbacks, and now he gets to face the second-youngest starting quarterback in the history of the Super Bowl (Drake Maye). In his two seasons on the job, Macdonald has played six games against first- or second-year quarterbacks and he's gone 6-0 in those games and those wins have come against good quarterbacks like Bo Nix, Jayden Daniels and Caleb Williams. Not only is he undefeated, but the six quarterbacks have averaged just 168.8 yards passing while throwing nine interceptions compared to just two touchdowns. Oh, and they've been sacked a total of 23 times, which definitely is NOT good news for Maye, who I think got sacked 23 times in every playoff game he played this year (OK, that's a slight exaggeration. He's only been sacked 15 times in three playoffs games, but that's still SECOND-MOST in a single season in NFL history). 

This is one game where I don't think the Patriots can afford to play from behind and the problem with that is that if you're playing the Seahawks, there's a 99.9% chance that you'll be playing from behind at some point. The Seahawks have held a DOUBLE-DIGIT lead in 11 of their past 14 games and two of those games where they didn't came against the Rams. If you take those out, it's 11 of 12 games. 

If the Seahawks force New England to play from behind, that means Maye will be throwing more and the Patriots haven't been great in those situations. Maye has had 11 games in his career where he's thrown 33 passes or more and the Patriots have gone 3-8 in those games. Maye only has two games in his career where he's thrown multiple interceptions and both of those came in one of those games where he was forced to throw the ball at least 33 times. Basically, when Maye has been forced to carry the team by throwing the ball a lot, the Patriots haven't done well, so if the Seahawks turn New England into a one-dimensional passing offense, this could get ugly. 

I have no idea which Maye is going to show up on Sunday: Playoff Maye or regular-season Maye. He played at an MVP level during the regular season, but he's struggled in the playoffs. You can blame it on his bad shoulder, you can blame it on the fact that the Patriots have faced some good defenses or you can blame it on the fact that he doesn't like his wife's chocolate date bars. I don't care what you blame it on, but it's a fact.

Let's check out the numbers:

During the regular season, the Patriots were the second-highest scoring team in the NFL at 28.8 points per game. In the playoffs, that number has dropped down to 18 points per game. Before this season, do you know how many teams had made the Super Bowl over the past 45 years while averaging 18 points per game in the playoffs? ZERO.

If you can't score more than 18 points against Seattle, you're not going to win, it's that simple. There were only two games all year where the Seahawks scored less than 18 points and they BOTH came against the 49ers, a divisional opponent that knows them well. The Patriots do not know them well. 

The only way the Patriots are going to be able to stay in this game is if their defense can slow down Seattle's offense and I just don't think that's going to happen. This is the Starbucks (Seattle) versus Dunkin' (Boston) Super Bowl, and I have to say, I'm a Starbucks guy. Just like Harold Landry. 

I'm going to say the Seahawks roll to a win, but they only get eight minutes to celebrate before the NFL steps in and forces the sale of the team by holding a live auction on the field after the game. 

The pick: Seahawks 34-20 over Patriots
Record picking Seahawks games this season: 14-5
Record picking Patriots games this season: 14-6

Championship Sunday 

Best pick: I predicted that the Patriots would beat the Broncos by three points in the AFC title game and guess what happened? The Patriots beat the Broncos by exactly three points in the AFC title game. In my prediction for the game, I wrote that the Broncos might be able to pull off the upset if Jarrett Stidham doesn't make any back-breaking mistakes, but then he immediately went out and made a back-breaking mistake.

The Broncos losing was probably for the best, because I'm not sure any of us were quite ready for Stidham in the Super Bowl. 

Worst pick: In the NFC title game, I predicted that Matthew Stafford would torch the Seahawks defense and that the Rams would end up winning and I'm giving myself a half a point for that because Stafford did end up torching the Seahawks' defense. As a matter of fact, Stafford was so good that he actually made history, but not in the kind of way you want to make history. 

Over the course of NFL history, NFL quarterbacks who throw for at least 320 yards with at least two touchdown passes and zero interceptions in a playoff game are 34-11 and that breaks down like this: 

• Stafford is 1-3
• Every other QB combined is 33-8

Stidham threw for 9 yards, turned the ball over twice and his team somehow managed to only lose by three. Stafford put together one of the best conference title game performances of all time and his team lost by more than three. The NFL is unfair. 

All right, guys, I have some sad news. This was my final picks column of the season, which means I am now going to go into hibernation and do nothing for the next seven months. Just kidding, that's not how things work. I'll still be writing over the next seven months, but the picks won't be returning until September. If you can't wait that long, then I highly suggest you sign up for our NFL newsletter, which I'm in charge of. It's basically the offseason version of this picks column except without the picks. You can sign up by clicking here (Just look for the Pick Six newsletter). 

If you sign up, I'll see you soon. If you don't sign up, I'll see you in September for the opener, but you should sign up.

Picks record

Straight up for AFC and NFC title games: 1-1
SU overall in playoffs: 6-6
Against the spread for title games: 1-1
ATS overall in playoffs: 3-9

Final 2025 regular-season record
Straight up: 166-105-1
Against the spread: 129-140-3

You can find John Breech on Facebook or Twitter and if he's not doing one of those things, he is probably trying to gently break the news to his wife that he won't he home for Valentine's Day next year.