It’s Super Bowl weekend, and after five months of NFL action just two teams remain standing as the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks run back Super Bowl XLIX. Both teams have been among the NFL’s most-dominant all year long, and the game looks set to be a closely-matched one with Seattle entering as single-score favorites.
Throughout the season, we’ve checked in with the simulation engine in Madden 26 to see what the game thinks is likely to happen, and with just one game to go, all that’s left is to see who is expected to come out on top this Sunday. To do this, we’ve run five simulations of the game to look for the larger trends of the simulations.
Who Does Madden Think Is Going To Win Super Bowl LX
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We’re going to take some time to look at the particulars of what goes down in our five Super Bowl LX simulations shortly, but first things first, the top-line news. Who does Madden predict is going to come out victorious when the Patriots and Seahawks run it back with another Super Bowl title on the line? Here’s what the five simulations said:
- Simulation 1: Seattle 28-14 New England: Do not let the relatively respectable score trick you into thinking this is a Super Bowl we would be lucky to receive, as this game was an absolute slog. An 11-point fourth quarter for Seattle inflated the offensive numbers late, but this was a game of stagnant offenses. Drake may had the most yards, 181, Zach Charbonnet with 63 rushing yards, and Rashid Shaheed with 54 receiving yards. Ernest Jones IV’s two fumble recoveries stole the show as the Seahawks defense won this almost entirely on their own.
- Simulation 2: Seattle 28-17 New England: Though similar in scoreline, right down to another bagel for the Patriots in the final quarter to stretch a four-point deficit to a double-digit loss, this matchup actually featured some offense. Both quarterbacks threw a pair of touchdowns against a single interception. No individual skill player went off for a huge game, but the depth of talent in Seattle won the day as Charbonnet and Kenneth Walker III combined for a 100-yard day on the ground while both Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Cooper Cuppp each topped 75 yards through the air.
- Simulation 3: Seattle 23-17 New England: It was three-for-three for Seattle after this one, but this was the closest game yet. For starters, New England actually managed a fourth-quarter score with a Drake May short-yardage score, tying the game and sending it to overtime. Unfortunately, that just set the stage for the first player to top 100 yards in any of our simulations, albeit with a bonus possession in the extra session, as Kenneth Walker III’s 22nd carry of the game brought him up to 114 yards on the ground and, more importantly, one Super Bowl-winning touchdown.
- Simulation 4: New England 23-16 Seattle: The Patriots finally get on the board in our simulations, and it took a fourth-quarter comeback to get there as a Seahawks field goal broke a 13-13 tie early in the final frame before the Patriots scored the game’s final ten to claim the victory. Once again, it was a defensive struggle as the winning Patriots managed just 191 yards in the air and 70 on the ground. Where the game swung was in the Patriots’ ability to stay on the field on the crucial drives of the game, with seven third-down conversions to Seattle’s three, allowing them to compress the few yards they got into a collection of scoring drives between three-and-outs.
- Simulation 5: New England 20-12 Seattle: Once again, the New England rushing attack was absolutely nowhere to be found, managing to put just 36 yards of movement in for the Pats offense. Once again, the defense made sure that it didn’t matter as the Patriots held Seattle to just six points through three quarters and out of the endzone entirely as the Seahawks managed just four field goals in the entire game. Changing things up slightly from the Pats’ offensive trend, it was Hunter Henry leading the way in the pass-catching game, with 11 receptions for 117 yards and a score to be the standout performer.
The Patriots made a late charge winning our last two simulations but the consensus opinion had already been reached by then. With three wins to two and a net points total of 16 points in their favor, Madden NFL 26 predicts the Seattle Seahawks to win Super Bowl LX.
Key Takeaways From Five Super Bowl LX Simulations
After five passes through ways the Big Game could go down, there were some things that jumped out for their consistency, even as the games themselves changed. Here were the biggest items that jumped off the screen as we simulated Super Bowl LX:
- Defenses Will Have Their Day: Across five games, the clear winners for both teams were their defensive units. Neither quarterback threw three touchdowns or for 250 yards in any game. Just three players total across the five simulations went over 100 yards through the air or on the ground. Interestingly, this was not on the back of strong performances in the turnover game, with just one game where a defense managed to force more than two in the game. Instead, it was simply a matter of playing shutdown defense and keeping the offenses from being able to move the ball with any consistency to prevent them from racking up points as they went.
- Balance Matters for Seattle: The primary advantage that reared its head for the Seahawks in our simulations was having multiple targets to spread the ball around to. It was quite common for the Patriots to have both the top receiver and rusher in the game, with Stefon Diggs and Hunter Henry being the top receivers in four of five simulations. Where Seattle hit back was in doubling-up, as Charbonnet and Walker combined to often give Seattle the rushing edge while Cupp and Smith-Njigba combined to outperform New England’s top two pass-catchers.
- Madden RNG Can Be Repeated: This is actually related to Madden itself and not the game this weekend, as attempts to drop a save the week of the Super Bowl for easy replayability led to the discovery that simulating directly from the save point yielded the same simulated results every time. Same final score, same stats, same everything. Only by backtracking a week and advancing back to the week anew did it generate new results.
These are just simulations based on the ratings of players in the game, so there’s no need for New England fans to give up hope quite yet. Do you think Madden will close out an up-and-down season of predictions with a bang-on call for the Super Bowl, or did the game get it all wrong and the Patriots will once again be the ones celebrating as the silver and gold confetti falls in San Francisco?
