When the Seahawks face the Rams in Los Angeles on Sunday, it will be a showdown between two of the NFL's best teams, a pair of 7-2 squads that have each won four consecutive games in convincing fashion.
And in addition to being a contest between two great teams, Sunday's game at SoFi even comes complete with some juicy subplots.
There's the chess match between Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald, one of the game's best and most innovative defensive minds, and Rams coach Sean McVay, one of the game's best and most innovative offensive minds. Then there's the fact that Cooper Kupp will be facing his former team for the first time after a stellar eight-year career with the Rams. Linebacker Ernest Jones IV, if he's healthy enough to return from a knee injury, will also be facing his former team. And like so many matchups between top teams, both offenses will be led by elite quarterbacks, Sam Darnold for the Seahawks and Matthew Stafford for the Rams. And yes, Darnold is also facing the team that knocked him and the Vikings out of the playoffs last year while sacking him nine times.
But while Seahawks coaches and players are quick to acknowledge that they're facing one heck of an opponent this week, they are also being careful to not make this game anything bigger than what it is—the next game on a 17-game schedule.
"We definitely get intrigued by matchups, but we try to go back to the process as much as possible and I think we've been doing a good job of that as a team," defensive end Leonard Williams said. "Overall, it shows me what kind of team we have when I see guys get excited when we're playing against a good team. We've got the Rams coming up this week obviously and there's a lot of outside noise and things like that. But overall, it's about our process and just becoming better as a team. We are excited to play this game."
When Macdonald was asked if this game was a good test for his team, he acknowledged it was, but then qualified that response by adding that every week is a good test in its own way.
"I'm going to say yes, but if you had asked me that last week, I would say yes," Macdonald said. "Every time we go out there, it's going to be a test of what kind of team we can become. This is a different scenario that we haven't necessarily been in yet, but last week was a scenario we haven't been in. We haven't been in a situation where we're coming off a decisive victory and coming back home. So that was last week, this is this week, now we're going to play the Rams on the road for the first time this season. Every week's a new challenge and the guys have been up for them."
Cornerback Devon Witherspoon also didn't want to buy into the idea of this game being a measuring stick for the team.
"No, I just see it as another match up, a great team we've got to play," he said. "It's a divisional game, we know how they play. We know how they're going to come, the attitude they're going to bring. It's going to be a tough, fun, and physical football game."