CHARLOTTE—With the win on Sunday, the Seahawks reached 13 wins for just the third time in franchise history. The other two 13-win Seattle teams were the 2005 and 2013 teams, both of which reached the Super Bowl, with the latter winning it all. With the 49ers winning on Sunday Night Football, Seattle’s Week 18 game will determine the Seahawks NFC West divisional standings, as well as the NFC’s No. 1 seed, which comes with a first-round bye and homefield advantage in the playoffs.
Seattle’s position this year is vastly different than where they sat just one year ago, not in control of their playoff destiny and narrowly missing the playoffs. After Sunday’s win, Seattle also notched their first six-game winning streak since the end of the 2014 season.
Although Seattle has already clinched a playoff spot, the final game of the regular season against the 49ers is one the Seahawks feels has, “been a long time coming.” The Seahawks opened the season with a tough loss to San Francisco at home and will play them on the road to bookend their season.
“I think everyone in the locker room feels like it’s been a long time coming,” Leonard Williams said. “We’ve played them [in] Week 1, and we’re here now, and that’s one of those teams that we’ve been looking forward to playing again.”
This season, head coach Mike Macdonald has made an emphasis on going 1-0 every week and not thinking too far ahead and with Week 17 finished and taken care of, Seattle can start to shift their focus.
“As we’re hitting these benchmarks, it’s going to be the same message to the team because that’s what’s got us to this point,” Macdonald said postgame. “We’re going to do everything in our power to go win this one and we’ll go play the next one. You know, but that’s the message. It takes 100% of everybody all the time every week. Nothing changes this week. One of our goals is to win the division. It’s going to come down to if we win the game we win the division, so we’ll hit the next goal.”
Nick Emmanwori, who’s been having a remarkable rookie season said, “Whatever [next week] is for, if it’s for the one seed or whatever that game is for, just trying to go in there, get a dub.”
His mindset is one shared across the team, even amongst vets, some of whom have not played a playoff game in their career yet.
