“The reason their record is what it is and what their record is in one-score games is because they’re a good football team,” Macdonald said of the 13-2 Vikings. “We hung in there and had an opportunity win the game. We didn’t. There are things in all three phases we can do better, but did a lot of great things. Gave ourselves a chance to win. And so we’re on a short week, so we’ve got to go back to work in about an hour. We will be back and rocking. We’ve got a good plan, but our destiny is not in our hands right now, which is tough. But we still have a ton of football to play for. A break here or there, we’re right back in it and rolling. So we’ll dust ourselves off, chin up, chest out, and move forward. Onward we go.”
It was a pretty somber postgame scene for the Seahawks, who after winning four in a row coming out of the bye, were in control of their own destiny in the NFC West, only to have it slip away with back-to-back home losses, and Macdonald said his team should be hurting after this one.
“You know, it should hurt,” he said. “We’ve worked incredibly hard. We have been through a ton of adversity as a team. We’re going to stick together and go back to work. So we’re fighting for the right to stay alive, on a short week.”
While the Seahawks aren’t entirely in control of their destiny, what they do know at this point is that they have to bounce back and take care of business when the play the Bears on Thursday night, otherwise any talk of scoreboard watching on Saturday, or of obscure tiebreaking scenarios, won’t make a difference.
“We got to win two, but it starts with one,” said quarterback Geno Smith, who threw for 314 yards and three touchdowns, but was also intercepted twice. “We got a tough Chicago team on the road. I know their record isn’t the greatest, but if you watch film on those guys they got a tough team ask with a lot of the talent. We got to be ready coming off a short week, traveling on Christmas. Guys got to get their minds right and get ready to go.”
Said linebacker Ernest Jones IV, “We’ve just got to handle our part, which is win out. Then, let the chips fall where they fall. Hopefully, we catch a little luck and we can get in there. But, it’s tough in (the locker room).”
“We’ve got to go in and put it behind us now. We got to get ready for Chicago. On these short weeks, you can’t really bask in this, especially when you lose, you can’t really bask in the previous game, because in three days we’ll be lining up against a whole ‘nother team that doesn’t care that we just lost the game. For us, the focus is move forward, handle business in Chicago in prime time, and then we’ll see what happens with that matchup against the Rams.”
