By
Bob Condotta
Seattle Times staff reporter
Each party seems to last a little longer and lead to a little more.
Three weeks and a day after the Seahawks smoked cigars and danced and enjoyed themselves in the locker room at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., after clinching the NFC West and the No. 1 seed they again enjoyed the fruits of their labor Sunday at Lumen Field.
This time, they celebrated a bigger prize, advancing to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in franchise history, using the home-field advantage to outlast the Los Angeles Rams 31-27 for the NFC championship.
“It’s a dream come true, honestly,” said receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, whose 10 catches for 155 yards played as big of a role in the win as anything. “Just all the work that we put in in the offseason, in the summer, throughout this season, all the people, the doubters, the naysayers. It feels awesome to have a collective that just plays for the guy next to him.”
They partied as a collective in the locker room, the set list not-so-coincidentally featuring songs like Tupac’s California Love and “Going Back to Cali” by The Notorious B.I.G.
That’s what the Seahawks will be doing now: Going Back to Cali for the Super Bowl on Feb. 8 against an all-too-familiar foe — the New England Patriots, the foe the last time a different group of Seahawks made it to the big game following the 2014 season.
“This is a one-of-a-kind feeling, man,” said cornerback Devon Witherspoon, who along with almost the rest of the defense posed for a group picture in the locker room, smoking cigars, holding The George Halas Trophy, given to the NFC champion, and wearing NFC title hats and shirts. “It’s hard to even come up with words at this point in time.”
Team chair Jody Allen happily took the trophy, her first after her brother Paul took the first three.
“I’m incredibly proud to be standing here today and accepting this,” Allen said.
She hopes she can do what Paul did once — accept the Lombardi Trophy for winning it all and setting off the biggest party yet.
Sunday, they were happy with what they had, especially given how hard they had to work for it — not just against a Rams team that gained 479 yards, the most any team had this year against the Seahawks other than the Rams with 581 on Dec. 18 — but at one key juncture against themselves.Thanks largely, given the circumstances, to the best game Sam Darnold has ever played, the Seahawks led 31-20 and were on the verge of blowing the game open when cornerback Riq Woolen batted away a third-down pass from Stafford to Puka Nacua.
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The Seahawks were going to get the ball back with an 11-point lead and the chance to just about end it.
Only Woolen celebrated in front of the Rams bench, and just kept celebrating, eventually drawing a flag for taunting and giving the Rams a first down. A play later, a 34-yard Stafford pass to Nacua for a TD made it 31-27.
“That wouldn’t have happened if I just celebrate with the team,” Woolen said. “So I’ve just got to be smarter.”
On the sideline, tempers flared, some Seahawks teammates letting Woolen know what he had done was not acceptable.
When the Seahawks offense was then forced to punt, disaster seemed to be looming.
Safety Julian Love, one of the team’s strongest leaders, tried to calm the waters.
“I just tried to enforce the message that we don’t do that, it’s not smart,” Love said. “But it happened. What do we do now? We’ve got 15 minutes left to punch our ticket to the Super Bowl.”
That ticket seemed to be slipping away when Stafford led the Rams from their own 10 to the Seattle 6, the Rams facing a second-and-four with just under six minutes left.
Then Tyrice Knight tackled Rams running back Kyren Williams for no gain. Then Witherspoon batted down a pass to Konata Mumpfield. And then, on fourth down, Witherspoon did it again, batting down a pass in the back of the end zone to Terrance Ferguson.
“Defense, we didn’t play the way we wanted to,” defensive lineman Leonard Williams said. “But in a big-time play like that for us, all-or-nothing play. So, came up big.”Said Witherspoon, who had been beaten a few other times earlier: “It felt good to finally make a play. … We’re never going to chase plays. We’re gonna make the plays that come to us. Don’t let the moment get too big. Stay the course, bro. Do what we do, play by play, and we’re gonna win this football game — and we did.”
Darnold completed a 15-yard pass to Kenneth Walker III for one first down and then a 7-yard pass to Cooper Kupp on third-and-seven for another.
The Rams got the ball back with 25 seconds left, but from their own 7 had no time left to make a legit run at a TD and the game ended with time running out after Nacua caught a 21-yard pass from Stafford, unable to get out of bounds.“The drive at the end on offense was just tremendous,’’ said coach Mike Macdonald. “… You can’t talk about the game without talking about our quarterback. He just shut a lot of people up tonight, so really happy for him.”
Indeed, the game should put to bed for now the talk of Darnold’s inability to win the big one after he shrugged off the oblique injury that has nagged him the past two games to throw for 346 yards and three touchdowns without a turnover, even if the Seahawks quarterback largely deflected the narrative of the game giving him any redemption.
“I’m just happy to be a part of this team,” Darnold said. “We’re going to celebrate tomorrow in the meeting and move on.”
The win marks a rise under second-year coach Macdonald that if not quite meteoric, has at least exceeded almost every expectation the Seahawks and their fans had after he was officially named as the ninth head coach in franchise history on Jan. 31, 2024. He succeeded Pete Carroll, the most successful coach in team history but whose tenure had begun to stagnate with a record of 25-26 in his last three seasons and no playoff wins in his last four years.
Two years minus six days from when Macdonald was officially hired, the Seahawks are back in a Super Bowl.
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“They had us on the ropes straight up,” Macdonald said of the Rams, saying he was proud of how his team handled those ups and downs. “Just to be able to take it in after and understand what our team has been able to do up to this point and how they’ve done it, we’re just blessed.”
Even a Seahawk who has been here before, linebacker Ernest Jones IV who won a Super Bowl with the Rams following the 2021 season, seemed overcome with emotion.
“I can’t describe it, man,” Jones said. “This is everything that we prayed for, everything that we worked for. To see those guys celebrating in that locker room, because we won the West, we won the division, now we’re NFC champions, there’s nothing better. I’m excited, ready for this opportunity.”
Bob Condotta: bcondotta@seattletimes.com. Bob Condotta is a sports reporter at The Seattle Times who primarily covers the Seahawks but also dabbles in other sports. He has worked at The Times since 2002, reporting on University of Washington Husky football and basketball for his first 10 years at the paper before switching to the Seahawks in 2013.
