Joel Klatt: Seahawks are clearly the best team remaining

Among the four teams still alive in the NFL playoffs, the Seattle Seahawks enter the conference championship round looking like the favorite to win the Super Bowl.

Stacy: How confidence has flipped to Seahawks over Rams in last 2 months

Coming off a franchise-best 14-3 regular season that earned them the NFC’s top seed, Seattle opened its playoff run with a 41-6 shellacking of the San Francisco 49ers in last weekend’s divisional round. It was the Seahawks’ eighth straight win and it marked the fifth time in seven games their top-ranked scoring defense held an opponent to 10 points or fewer.

Seattle’s NFC title game opponent – the Los Angeles Rams – appears to be trending in the opposite direction.

After blowing a 16-point fourth-quarter lead in a Week 16 overtime loss to the Seahawks, the Rams lost to the 8-9 Atlanta Falcons the following week. They needed a second-half comeback to beat the 3-14 Arizona Cardinals in their regular-season finale. They needed a last-minute touchdown drive to rally past the 8-9 Carolina Panthers in the wild-card round. And they needed overtime to get past the Chicago Bears in the divisional round.

Meanwhile, on the AFC side, the top-seeded Denver Broncos just lost quarterback Bo Nix to a season-ending injury and will have to go the rest of the way with backup Jarrett Stidham. And while the New England Patriots went 14-3 during the regular season, they did so while facing the NFL’s easiest strength of schedule, beating only one opponent with a winning record.

With all that as the backdrop, FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt told Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk on Wednesday that he thinks the Seahawks are clearly the best team remaining.

“Normally, I get to this point in the season and I think it’s a coin flip for any of the four teams to win it all,” Klatt said. “But man, I gotta tell you guys, I don’t remember a year that I felt like a single team was this much better than the other three in a long time. I can’t remember the last time I felt this way. Maybe the (2007) undefeated Patriots?

“I might be selling the Rams short, and I know that they played a great game a couple of times against Seattle during the course of the year. But the way Seattle is playing now, New England and Denver aren’t going to beat them, certainly not (the Broncos) with Jarrett Stidham. … (The Rams barely) escaped the Panthers and Bears. And meanwhile, Seattle is just beating down their opponents.”

Listen to the full conversation with FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt at this link, in the video at the top of this post or in the audio player below. Tune into Brock and Salk weekdays from 6-10 a.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.

Seattle Seahawks-Los Angeles Rams coverage

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• Schlereth: Seattle Seahawks playing a style that wins in playoffs
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