The adage defense wins championships has been around longer than I’ve been alive, and that couldn’t be more true for our two Super Bowl teams. The Seattle Seahawks entered the playoffs with the No. 1 scoring defense in the league and held the San Francisco 49ers to just six points in the Divisional Round. The New England Patriots’ defense is playing its best football of the season, holding teams to 8.7 points per game, and has been getting after the quarterback at an extremely high rate.

Whoever wins this Super Bowl is going to do it on the back of their defense. This is the first time since 2016 that two defensive-minded head coaches have faced off in the big game. Prepare for it to be a low-scoring, defensive slugfest and not a high-flying shootout.

Here’s what each defense must do if they want to win the Super Bowl.

How the Seahawks can stop the Patriots

The No. 1 thing the Seahawks must do defensively is put pressure on Drake Maye. The second-year quarterback has been great this year, but he’s struggled under pressure, especially in the postseason.

Through three games, Maye is completing 57.1 percent of his throws for 149 yards and one touchdown, but has fumbled three times and has taken 15 sacks. His pressure-to-sack percentage is 45.5 percent, which is much higher than his regular-season total of 20.6 percent, and he already has four turnover-worthy plays, which is half of his 17-game regular-season total.

Seattle also needs to shut down New England’s rushing attack. I know that seems pretty obvious, but here’s why. When teams get the run game going, it opens off a lot of stuff in the pass game through play action. Maye has completed 73.3 percent of his throws for 142 yards and a touchdown with zero turnover-worthy plays off of play action this postseason. But is just 32-for-62 (51.6 percent) for 391 yards, three touchdowns, five turnover-worthy plays and a pick on normal dropbacks. Stopping the run won’t just benefit them on the ground, but it’ll help them through the air as well.

Getting pressure on the quarterback and stuffing the run is the name of the game for Seattle’s defense.

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How the Patriots can stop the Seahawks

For the Patriots, I think it’s a bit more difficult, and it really comes down to one player having the game of his life: Christian Gonzalez.

Sam Darnold has proven that pressure doesn’t bother him this postseason, throwing all four of his touchdowns with pressure in his face. New England would obviously love to make him prove he can keep that sort of efficiency up, but I don’t think that’s the main way they slow down this passing attack.

They have to slow down Jaxon Smith-Njigba. He is the lifeblood of this Seahawks offense, and Gonzalez is going to be the man tasked with stopping him. What makes JSN so hard to stop is Klint Kubiak. He has done a masterful job with this offense, and he’s not afraid to move JSN around. Just last week, he snuck him out of the backfield, and the defense completely lost him for a touchdown. Any receiver could’ve run that route; that was strictly play calling. New England is going to have to know where No. 11 is at all times and make sure he’s accounted for with at least two defenders. I think they can live with Cooper Kupp and Rashid Shaheed beating them. If they lose because JSN has 150+ yards and a touchdown, I don’t know how they could live with themselves.

They also have to bait Darnold into a mistake or two. Points will be at a premium in this game, so getting extra possessions is paramount for both sides. Darnold hasn’t turned the ball over this entire postseason, but he led the league with 20 of them in the regular season. He can be turnover-prone at times, so they need to disguise coverages and be ready to take advantage if Darnold makes a mistake.

Both sides have a formula for how they can win this game. Now, it will all come down to who can execute better.