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The Seattle Seahawks beat the Carolina Panthers on December 28, 27-10, and the message coming out of the locker room was crystal clear: Seattle is one win away from the NFC’s No. 1 seed and the division title.

Safety Julian Love didn’t hide how big the moment feels.

“It’s exciting,” Love said, adding that he hasn’t been in this kind of late-season position before, and that Seattle now has a chance to “really punch our ticket in a great way.”

Head coach Mike Macdonald echoed the same urgency, even if he tried to keep it businesslike.

“One of our goals is to win the division,” Macdonald said. “It’s going to come down to win the game, win the division.”

Key details from the Panthers win:

• Seattle’s defense delivered two takeaways that created short fields, including Love’s interception.
• The Seahawks leaned on the ground game again, with Macdonald noting back-to-back weeks around the 160–170 rushing yard range.
• Macdonald called it a “cool” moment to finish the game with a four-minute touchdown drive, something he said the team has wanted all season.

Seattle’s path is simple on paper: take care of business next week against the San Francisco 49ers and the Seahawks can secure the top seed and a first-round bye.

That’s why Love’s quote landed so hard. The Seahawks aren’t just chasing “playoffs.” They’re chasing the advantage that changes the entire postseason, rest, home-field, and a cleaner road to the Super Bowl.

Macdonald also made it clear the Seahawks believe they’re trending the right way heading into the regular-season finale, pointing to the offense’s recent balance.

“It’s right where we want to be at this point,” Macdonald said, before turning the focus immediately to the opponent: San Francisco and its run defense.

If the Seahawks are going to finish the job, the blueprint from the Panthers game is pretty obvious:

1) The defense has to keep creating “spark” moments. Love described Seattle’s identity as a unit that “chips away” and then flips the game with a play exactly what the takeaways did against Carolina.

2) Ball security can’t be a weekly adventure. Macdonald acknowledged quarterback Sam Darnold didn’t have his “best game of all time,” and the stats showed it, but he also pointed to a handful of tough third-down throws made under pressure. The message from the coach: protect the ball early in plays, and finish clean. He said the team calls it “eat,” how you finish plays.

3) The Seahawks want to run the game into the fourth quarter.Macdonald’s biggest compliment might’ve been what happened after the highlight plays: Seattle closed. A late touchdown drive that bleeds the clock is exactly the type of ending that travels in January — and it’s the kind of drive that turns a “must-win” week into a statement.

The Seahawks (13-3) don’t just control their postseason fate; they can lock up the NFC West title and the NFC’s No. 1 seed (plus the conference’s lone first-round bye and home-field advantage) with the right combination of results. Seattle clinches both if it wins and gets a Rams loss or tie, plus a 49ers–Bears tie. If the Seahawks don’t get the full top-seed combo, they can still clinch the NFC West in a couple cleaner ways: a Seattle win plus either a Rams loss/tie and a 49ers loss/tie, or a Seattle tie plus a Rams loss and a 49ers loss.

Love sounded like a veteran who’s been waiting for this kind of moment.

Seattle is one game away from turning a solid season into a season with real postseason leverage. And Macdonald, while “boring” by his own admission, didn’t sugarcoat the goal: win next week, win the division.

If the Seahawks do that, everything changes, and the NFC has to come through Seattle.