Mina Kimes points to likely gameplan for Seahawks against 49ers

Seattle Seahawks fans should be feeling pretty confident going into tonight's playoff game against the San Francisco 49ers.

They're a better team overall, they have home-field advantage and they're far closer to 100% healthy than their rivals, who lost yet another blue chip piece last week when George Kittle went down with an Achilles injury.

Seattle did get a late scare on the injury report this week, though. On Thursday starting quarterback Sam Darnold was listed as questionable to play with a new oblique injury.

While it's not on his throwing side and Darnold is expected to play, it could affect how much power he can put into his deep pass attempts.

That just makes it all the more likely that offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak will choose to rely on what worked so well when these teams met two weeks ago.

Here's ESPN analyst and Seahawks superfan Mina Kimes breaking down the numbers for the Seahawks' run game from the Week 18 matchup - specifically when they used 21 personnel.

Mina Kimes on Seahawks-49ers

Something Seattle had success with vs the Niners in week 18: Running the ball with their fullback on the field.

Both @billbarnwell and I expect to see more of it this weekend… pic.twitter.com/x9kuSJlXVa
— Mina Kimes (@minakimes) January 16, 2026

The run-the-ball-down-their-throat gameplan worked like a charm. Together, Ken Walker and Zach Charbonnet racked up 171 yards on the ground and averaged over five yards per carry. Meanwhile, on the other side of that ledger the Seahawks bottled up Christian McCaffrey quite well, holding him to just 23 yards and 2.9 yards per attempt.

This was a late-blooming development for Seattle's offense, but their run game finally managed to hit high gear in the last month of the season. For the year they finished 12th in rushing yards per game despite being near the bottom of the league in that metric for most of the season.

Defensively, the 49ers simply don't have the pieces to stop Seattle's rushing attack. They had hoped that middle linebacker Fred Warner would return in time for this game but he was not activated from IR, where he's been since Week 6.

The addition of Eric Kendricks has provided some spark for this group, but overall the Niners are just too thin at linebacker to compete with a running back room as special as this one. Expect a heavy dose of run game, a dash of play action, and then another large helping of run-through-a-MF-face from Kubiak, today.

Mina Kimes on Seahawks-49ers

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