The Seahawks and Rams Are Both Peaking Before Their Massive Week 11 Clash

If you want to know how Mike Macdonald feels about his team, you can find that in last week’s practice schedule. The Seahawks were returning from a Sunday night game in Washington, and the second-year coach’s leadership council, during their regular meetings with him, suggested giving the guys a chance to get their legs back.

So Wednesday’s practice was just a walkthrough, and they’d make a tweak later in the week, too.

“What’s good, what I love about our team, is however we decide we want to do our process, they’re bought in on it,” Macdonald said, from his office at Lumen Field early Sunday night. “So how we travel, how we do Fridays, how we do Saturdays, the cool thing is whatever we feel like the team needs, we’ve been able to adjust how we do things without sacrificing our principles in how we want to operate. 

“We talked to the leaders on Friday. They told me, ‘We still need to slow down the tempo.’ And so we adjusted on Friday. It’s the whole methods-and-principles thing, where we’re able to adjust those things, but the intent of how we prepare has stayed the same.”

In other words, the methods are flexible, the principles are not.

And at this point, the results are undeniable. Sunday’s breezy 44–22 win over the Cardinals in Seattle was the Seahawks’ fourth straight, but that’s just part of the story about where the team is in Macdonald’s second year in charge.

A rested, fresh-legged Seahawks crew burst from the gate like Secretariat—again. They scored touchdowns on long drives on their first three possessions and carried a 38–7 halftime lead, which, remarkably, is the third time in nine games this year that they’ve scored over 30 points in the first half.

What’s more? Against Arizona, somehow, they got there, then held on for a 44–22 win, with a total of 12 passing attempts. If you throw in Arizona’s one sack, that’s 13 called pass plays against 46 rushes for the Seattle offense.

“How many?” Macdonald asked, after I asked him whether he’d ever been part of a game with his team logging so few throws.

“I didn’t know that [it was just 12],” he said, with genuine surprise in his voice. “No, I don’t think so … unless I was coaching for Navy or something.”

Whatever you want to compare it to, it’s clear, tucked away up in the Pacific Northwest, the sort of level the Seahawks are playing at. They’re balanced and deep. The quarterback, Sam Darnold, has had a triple-digit passer rating in six of his past seven games. Jaxon Smith-Njigba might be the league’s Offensive Player of the Year. The defense is top 10 in the league, without real discernable holes in the lineup.

And next week, all that will be tested when these 7–2 Seahawks visit the 7–2 Rams.

There were lots of examples, through Sunday’s 42–26 smackdown of the 49ers, of the extent to which Matthew Stafford is feeling it. The Rams scored on their first three possessions of each half and only punted twice. The quarterback threw for 280 yards and four touchdowns. Twice in the second half, the Niners drew within a touchdown, and both times Stafford responded with a touchdown drive.

But there was no play that seemed to draw more enjoyment from him, or coach Sean McVay, than one that didn’t count with 2:42 left. Facing fourth-and-1, Stafford delivered a hard count to the Niners’ defensive front, and veteran DT Jordan Elliott jumped, taking the last few vestiges of hope away from the hosts.

“Any time you don’t have to run the play to get that first down, after staying disciplined?” receiver Davante Adams said over the phone, about an hour after the fact. “That’s one of our tools, our cadence. We did a good job at it, and we’re going to continue to use it.”

One of their many tools.

The strength of the Rams starts, of course, with their MVP candidate quarterback—and it could take a while to cover the rest. Los Angeles has a sturdy line, rugged backs, a deep, versatile group of receivers and a fearsome defensive front. The one real trouble area, corner, was addressed a couple weeks back with the trade for the Titans’ Roger McCreary.

And the malleability all that gives the team was noticeable on this particular Sunday.

Stafford finished the day with 24 completions (on 36 attempts) to eight different receivers, four of them tight ends. Two of those tight ends—Colby Parkinson and Davis Allen—caught touchdown passes. Which happened primarily because the Rams leaned heavily into 13-personnel looks—with a back, a receiver and three tight ends on the field at once.

“The way Sean’s able to dial it up obviously puts us in great position, and makes it tough on defenses,” Adams told me. “They see 13-personnel go out there, a bunch of tight ends, they think it’s run-heavy and we go out and run play-action, and it limits some of the things they’re doing. Sean’s a great play-caller and we got a lot of weapons at each position, to the point where we can do whatever we want.”

Next week, it might be going back to old staples out of 11-personnel, playing with two backs or spreading Seattle out. The depth of both the group and the football encyclopedia Stafford has in his head enables the Rams to draw on any of it to combat whatever an opponent brings.

And being in that environment has not only helped all the young guys GM Les Snead has brought in and McVay has developed—it’s also helped pump life back in the old vet, Adams.

“It starts from the top down. There’s great ownership here, general manager’s a G, and the head coach is who he is, we all know what Sean’s about,” Adams said. “And then when you look at the roster, we’ve got everything else in place, a winning team, winning culture as well. It’s a lot of fun to be a part of something like this. It just brings out the best in me.”

They’ll need it Sunday, of course.

So now, the battlelines are drawn.

For his part, Adams pleaded ignorance on the Seahawks—he’s new to the NFC West, and has yet to see his Week 11 opponent on tape, having put all his work into the teams he’s played against thus far. Macdonald has gotten himself a little more of a look-see at what’s coming next, and his approach to the week won’t change much.

“I think the trap is to say, ‘O.K., this is different,’” Macdonald said. “They’re a really good team. They’re a team that we’re going to need to be able to beat. But, to me, you don’t give your team the best chance to win if you start making it about them. You have to understand how they operate. You gotta nail your game plan. But what’s gotten us to this point is us playing the best version of ball that we can play.  

“I know it sounds like stupid and cliché, but that’s really how we’ve decided we want to roll,” Macdonald said. “And that’s what we have to nail again this week. Gotta have a great week. Gotta have a great game plan as coaches. We can’t be going crazy. Just go do what we need to do. There’s gonna be some things throughout the week that I don’t know that we’re gonna be able to do, methods-wise, where we’re gonna have to adjust, so our team’s ready to go play our best ball.”

Which, very clearly, has worked for the Seahawks thus far.

We’ll see how the whole thing holds up in Inglewood in seven days.

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