Seahawks Celebrate NFC West Title & No. 1 Seed While Also Knowing ‘We’ve Got More Work To Do’
That’s the path three previous Seahawks teams have taken in the postseason, and in all three of those seasons, they reached the Super Bowl.
“Of all the things we’ve been thinking about over the last 30 minutes or so, that’s definitely a point of pride that we can have at least one home playoff game in front of the 12s,” Macdonald said. “They’ve been dynamite this year. They’ve been absolutely incredible. We’re really excited to be able to stay home.”
While now isn’t the time for Macdonald to appreciate what he and his team accomplished this season, it’s worth examining before the focus shifts from regular season to postseason. Since taking over as Seattle’s head coach, the Seahawks have a 24-10 record, including a league-best 20-5 over their last 25 games. This year’s team not only won the most games and road games in franchise history, it also posted a league-best point differential of plus-191 that was the best in team history. The Seahawks also scored the most points in franchise history with 483 while at the same time fielding arguably the NFL’s best defense, a group known as “The Dark Side” that the best Seattle has seen since the Legion of Boom defenses that led the Seahawks to consecutive Super Bowl last decade.
“We’re here today as number one seed because of Mike,” linebacker Ernest Jones IV said. “Not just the way he calls it, but the community that he’s building in that locker room. We play for each other. We fight for each other. I’ve said this before, we got here to this point, and it started last year. It started through those ups and downs that we had last year when I came here. It started then and we were able to pick it up this year and just keep rolling.”
As Macdonald spoke to the media, the party continued in the locker room, and perhaps nobody was appreciating it more than veteran defensive tackle Leonard Williams, who in his previous 10 seasons, the first eight and a half of which were spent with the Jets and Giants, reached the postseason only twice, never winning more than 11 games in a season. Shirt off and victory cigar in his hand, Williams savored the moment while recognizing that there’s still work to do.
“It’s incredible,” Williams said. “I don’t want today to end, honestly. I was hanging out I the locker room for a long time, that’s probably why I’m the last one here (for a postgame press conference) right now. It’s incredible. I’ve been playing for a really long time, this is the closest team I’ve ever been on, the most winning season I’ve ever been on, and overall, the job’s not done. That’s another thing I love about this team so much—people are celebrating, but in the middle of the celebrations, you’re hearing people say, ‘We’ve got more work to do, we’ve got to move onto the next one.’ Not having that complacency is really special.
“The victory cigars were pretty awesome. I couldn’t really breathe in there at one point, but it didn’t really matter. My excitement and joy was taking over the smoke in my eyes and not being able to breathe. It was just beautiful to see my team celebrating and seeing everyone happy from all the hard work we’ve been putting in.”
