Nine years is an eternity, especially in sports.
The kids who are seniors in high school were third graders nine years ago. Athletes, football players who are 25 were barely of legal driving age then. Jaxon Smith-Njigba was a 14-year-old. This time nine years ago, Nick Emmanwori was a month away from turning 12.
Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald was just finishing his third season working in the NFL with the Baltimore Ravens nine years ago. He was 29.
Cal Raleigh wasn’t yet the Big Dumper, he was just a kid in college at Florida State. We were still nearly two years away from the Kraken franchise being awarded by the NHL. Washington was just days removed from losing to Alabama in the College Football Playoff under Chris Petersen as head coach.
Nine years ago was the last time the Seahawks played a postseason game inside their home stadium with fans in attendance. That Saturday night in January 2017 when the Seahawks topped the Detroit Lions in a wild-card round game was the last time postseason football was played under the arches of Lumen Field with full-throated fans providing the soundtrack to another Seahawks playoff victory.
That streak will come to an end Saturday night just after 5 p.m. when the Seahawks and 49ers clash in the NFC divisional playoff game. a streak that will end on Saturday night when they face San Francisco in the NFC divisional playoff game.
The winner will advance to the NFC Championship Game next week against either the Chicago Bears or Los Angeles Rams. If the Seahawks win, the game will be at Lumen Field.
“It’s awesome. It’s not like one of your absolute goals throughout the year. Having a home playoff game doesn’t guarantee a championship or all those things you’re really shooting for, but it really is part of the things that we do want to achieve or deliver to our fans is having these home playoff experiences and it’s part of the overall bigger vision of what we’re trying to create,” Macdonald said. “You’re definitely proud of that. We expect to do it a lot, hopefully.”
Of course, that nine-year absence of true home playoff games comes with an asterisk as the Seahawks did host a playoff game in 2020 during the season impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic but with no fans and cardboard cutouts in the seats of Lumen Field.
But while technically it was a playoff game, THAT wasn’t a playoff game in Seattle. Just ask someone who was there, albeit on the winning side of a 30-20 victory by the Rams that day.
“That wasn’t super cool. Touching on it, the environment is created by the people that fill that space,” said Seahawks wide receiver Cooper Kupp, who had four catches for the Rams in that victory on Jan. 9, 2021. “As much as we prepare and all this different stuff that happens, when you step out into that stadium, the 60,000, 70,000 people that are going to fill that stadium, that are going to create the environment, going to create the buzz, going to create the electricity, yeah, not having that, it’s not how the game is meant to be played. There’s supposed to be that factor. There’s supposed to be that electricity, the ebbs and flows.”
Getting to the point of hosting playoff games at Lumen Field is one of the significant accomplishments within the first two seasons of Macdonald’s tenure. And it took a major turnaround to reach this point.
Between 2021-24, the Seahawks were tied with Tennessee for the 20th best home record in the NFL at just 16-18. A losing mark that was at the core of three straight mediocre seasons that led to Pete Carroll’s departure and a significant part of why they didn’t make the playoff in Macdonald’s first year despite winning 10 games.
What once was a fortress — the Seahawks were 48-16 between 2012-19 — had fallen by the wayside. Seattle was an average team playing inside its own stadium.
That changed the second half of this season. After losing two of the first three home games — including the season-opener against the 49ers — the Seahawks went 5-0 at Lumen Field the rest of the way, including blowout wins over Arizona and Minnesota, and uncomfortably narrow victories over Indianapolis and the Thursday night overtime classic against the Rams.
That closing stretch of wins at home is a significant reason why the Seahawks are in the position of having home-field advantage as the No. 1 seed for the playoffs.
“I think it’s just the way we prep every week, treating every week the same, whether on the road, whether at home, whether we’re in the playoffs, whether it’s Week 1, whether it’s a preseason game,” defensive lineman Leonard Williams said. “I think we prep the same every week, and I think it’s been showing up at home this year. Like I said, it feels great to bring that home and bring it to the 12s.”
Getting another chance to play in front of the home fans next week in the NFC championship would mean solving a team that’s on an unprecedented run of success at Lumen Field. The rivalry aspect of facing the 49ers immediately adds a little more fuel — and a few memories — to what’s going to take place.
The 49ers have won each of their last four trips to Seattle and five of the past seven dating to the 2019 season finale. Brock Purdy has never walked off the field in Seattle having suffered a loss.
There’s also the backstory on the Seattle side of Macdonald having never been a head coach in a playoff game, or the stigma with quarterback Sam Darnold and how his first playoff experience went poorly last year with Minnesota. Throw in an unexpected oblique injury on the final day of practice and there’s even more layers to what will be significant focus on the Seahawks QB.
Saturday night is going to end up being meaningful and significant for somebody, one way or the other.
“You can’t take it for granted. It’s very hard to get this opportunity,” defensive lineman Uchenna Nwosu said. “The team that we have, we know we have a run to get to where we want to go. I’m just going to embrace the journey, put all my effort into it because who knows when it’s going to come again.”