The stakes in Saturday’s Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers game are about as high as they can get in the regular season. Who the NFC West champion is will be determined, who drops down to a wild card team will be decided, and who the NFC will have to run through to get to the Super Bowl is on the line.
In a game of this magnitude, star players step up and make their presence known, shaping who the victor will be. Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald is making sure their process remains the same as it’s been all season.
In their biggest game of the season, Macdonald is relying on the process and principles that helped propel Seattle to the top seed in the conference.
Sticking to Their Principles
The Seahawks are well aware of the stakes of Saturday’s game against the 49ers and what it could mean for their playoff path. A win gets them home field throughout the playoffs, and a loss drops them into having to go through the playoffs on the road.
Still, Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald is preaching to his team to control what they can control. Ari Horton of Seahawks.com wrote about Macdonald’s message in her December 31 article.
“We got here by our mentality on how we approach every day,” Macdonald said. “And that’s what we’re going to do this week, and that’s what we’re going to do next week, whether we’re playing or not. And then that’s just how we’re going to roll. It just cleans it up. It’s just worry about the stuff we can control, which right now it’s, ‘Hey, we get an opportunity to move around outside and get our timing down and clean up some early down stuff, work on third down, red zone.‘ I mean, those are the things our guys are thinking about right now. And there’s some things that we feel like we need to be able to do to play really good ball and give ourselves a chance to win.”
Macdonald is instilling in the team the same approach they’ve had all season, and for Sam Darnold, he’s drawing on experience.
Learning From the Past
Last season, Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold was in a similar situation with the Minnesota Vikings: a win got them the one seed and the division, and a loss dropped them to a wild-card team. The Vikings lost, Darnold struggled, and the team was knocked out of the playoffs in the wild-card round. Darnold is hoping to learn from that experience and not repeat similar mistakes.
Ari Horton of Seahawks.com, in her January 1 article, wrote about how Darnold is dealing with the same scenario for the second season in a row and what he has learned from it.
“Just understanding the gravity of the game and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, it’s just football,” Darnold said. “And I think that’s the best part about it is people want to make it a little bit bigger than it is, but we’re just going out there, we’re playing against the Niners, a really good football team, a team that we’re going to be prepared for, and it’s going to be great though. The fans are going to be into it. It’s going to be a great atmosphere, but other than that, it’s football and we’ll be ready to go for it.”
Everything is on the line for the Seahawks on Saturday, and the team is confident in its processes and mentality, helping it prevail one more time in the regular season.
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