The Seahawks and Rams will face off Sunday at SoFi Stadium in a game that, for the time being at least, will determine who leads a tight NFC West race. Both teams come into the game with matching 7-2 records, and both are riding four-game winning streaks heading into Sunday's game.

It's a big test for a pair of NFC contenders, but the Seahawks know they can't get caught up in the hype surrounding the game and let that distract them from putting in the work it takes to be ready on Sunday.

"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," said defensive end Leonard Williams. "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."

Here are five things to watch when the Seahawks travel to Los Angeles this weekend to face the Rams:

1. Who takes the lead in a tight NFC West Race?

With matching 7-2 records, neither the Seahawks nor Rams would be in too bad of a spot with a loss on Sunday, and at the same time, neither team can run away with a division title with a single win. Both of those things are especially true given that they play each other again in Week 16.

But while Sunday's game won't determine either team's fate for the season, it will give one team the lead in what figures to be a close finish down the stretch (and you can't count out the 49ers at 6-4). As last season showed, every game matters, especially in a division race. The Seahawks and Rams finished last year with matching 10-7 records, including a split of their head-to-head matchups, and with matching division and conference records, as well as the same record against common opponents, the division was ultimately decided by the fifth tiebreaker, strength of victory, which favored the Rams. So again, while nothing will be decided this week, this game could prove critical when the dust settles at the end of the season.

And a big reason this game is so intriguing, aside from the obvious implications for the standings, is that both are playing at such a high level coming into the game. The Seahawks and Rams have each won four straight games, and neither has trailed in a game since the first half of their respective Week 6 wins. The Rams have outscored opponents by 82 points over that span, while the Seahawks have outscored their last four by 62 points, and for the season, the Seahawks have the NFC's best point differential (103), while the Rams rank second (98). The Seahawks and Rams are also the only two teams in the NFL that rank in the top five in both points scored and points allowed. In other words, this is a heavyweight matchup no matter how you look at it.

But again, as big as this matchup might feel for outside observers, the Seahawks know they can't treat it as anything but the next game on their schedule.

"One-and-0, that's what it means," outside linebacker DeMarcus Lawrence said. "Stick to the script, don't try to get too high, get too low about it, and just go 1-0."

2. Can the Seahawks pass rush get to Matt Stafford with four and cool off the Rams' red-hot quarterback?

Matthew Stafford has been one of the league's best quarterbacks all season, and especially over the past three games, throwing 13 touchdown passes with no interceptions in a trio of victories. Stafford himself has obviously been a big part of that passing game success, but another big factor has been the Rams' pass protection, with Stafford getting sacked only three times in those games. For the season, Stafford has been sacked 14 times on 310 pass attempts, his lowest sack rate since 2013 when he was with the Lions.

In what should be one of the game's many intriguing matchups, the Seahawks will counter with one of the league's best pass rushes, which has produced 32 sacks, tied for the second most in the NFL. And though the Seahawks had a lot of success when they blitzed last week, including two Tyrice Knight forced fumbles that were returned for touchdowns by DeMarcus Lawrence, they may not want to use that strategy against Stafford. This season, Stafford has thrown an NFL-leading 20 touchdown passes against blitzes with no interceptions, including all 13 touchdown passes he threw in the past three games. Last week against the 49ers, Stafford was 13 for 18 for 161 yards and four touchdowns against the blitz.

While the Seahawks have had success when blitzing, one thing they have going for them against the Rams is that they've been able to create pressure without sending extra rushers. Per NFL Next Gen Stats, the Seahawks, who have 32 sacks through nine games, have a pressure rate of 40.4 percent, the third best in the NFL, but they're doing that while blitzing at the second-lowest rate in the league (19.4 percent). For perspective, the other three teams in the NFL with 30 or more sacks are blitzing at least 30 percent of the time, and the other four teams in the top five of pressure rate are also blitzing on more than 30 percent of opponent drop backs.

3. Can the Seahawks clean up their turnover issues?

The Seahawks have done a lot of things well on offense this season, hence ranking third in the NFL in scoring at 30.6 points per game. But the one significant blemish for the Seahawks on that side of the ball has been the rate with which they're turning the ball over. The Seahawks committed three turnovers last week—though not until the game was well out of reach thanks to a prolific first half—giving them 16 this season, tied for the second most in the league.

"The ball has been in jeopardy too often, offensively, and that's something we need to focus on moving forward," Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said.

The Rams, meanwhile, have 14 takeaways, tied for fifth most in the league, including four in the past two weeks.

A few turnovers notwithstanding, Darnold has been one of the league's best quarterbacks this season, but knows he and the entire offense need to be cleaners against a team as good as the Rams.

"It's about being very deliberate with my progressions, going through my reads, understanding when the pocket's a little bit messy and when I need to maybe check the ball down or even just throw it away," Darnold said. "I think that's going to be a huge point of emphasis this week. But again, I like to play every single play as its own and go from there."

4. What does Jaxon Smith-Njigba do next, and what kind of homecoming is it for Cooper Kupp.

Sunday's game figures to be a significant one for both of Seattle's top two pass-catchers. For Smith-Njigba, the league's leading receiver by a wide margin, it is a chance to add on to what has been a phenomenal first half to his season. The third-year receiver eclipsed 1,000 yards in just nine games while going over the 100-yard mark in six of nine games. With another 100-yard game, Smiht-Njigba would pass Steve Largent for the most in in a season in team history, and if he gets to 75 yards, he would be the first player in the Super Bowl era to have at least 75 receiving yards in each of the first 10 games of a season.

"I said my rookie year, 'just because he didn't have the numbers everybody else thought he would have, y'all just don't know what he has in store for y'all,'" said fellow 2023 first-round pick Devon Witherspoon. "We always expected him to be this guy, now he got a chance to show it, and everybody gets a chance to see it now, of course."

Kupp, meanwhile, is keeping the focus on treating this just like any other game, but whether he wants to view it this way or not, it is a chance for him to show the Rams that he still has plenty of left in the tank after they elected to move on from him in a salary-cap saving move this offseason. Kupp, a Yakima native, returned to his home state this offseason, signing with Seattle after eight seasons with the Rams, a run that included a historic 2021 season in which he led the league in receiving yards, catches and touchdowns before going on to win Super Bowl MPV honors to cap off the season.

Kupp hasn't seen the volume of targets he was used to for most of his time with the Rams, but he has still been highly productive when targeted, and he's also provided a ton of value to the team with everything he does outside of the three hours the team takes the field on Sundays.

"He's incredible," Darnold said. "I feel like I talk about it a lot, but just the work that he puts in, it's unlike anyone else that I've ever met. He's been a huge fit for us as an offense with just the way that he works and just the things he can do on the field as well. He's also been a huge catalyst for bringing these guys together and bringing the team together too. This is probably the understatement of the year, but he's a very important piece of what we're building here."

5. What can Mike Macdonald and Sean McVay cook up to try to outsmart each other in a chess match between two of the league's best and most innovative coaches?

Macdonald made it clear this week that Sunday's game isn't about him and his matchup with Rams coach Sean McVay, but it's simply not possible to look at this game and not be intrigued by, well, the coaching matchup between Macdonald and McVay.

McVay has been not just one of the league's most successful coaches since coming into the league, he has also been an offensive innovator at the forefront of so many different recent trends. Macdonald, meanwhile, came to Seattle as the league's youngest head coach and as a defensive innovator whose scheme in Baltimore was giving opposing offenses fits. And now, not surprisingly as these two teams battle for the division lead, Macdonald's defense is one of the best in the league, and

McVay's offense is also among the league's best.

Both will stick to what they do best, but they'll also come into the game knowing they need to have answers to what the play caller on the opposite sideline is cooking up.

"Mike's a virus, he wants to adapt," said Kupp, who spent his entire NFL career playing for McVay before joining Macdonald's Seahawks this year. "He wants to be ahead of the curve. He wants to adapt to what's happening and be ahead of you before you get on the field—your (coverage) beaters, it's too late.

"(McVay and Macdonald) definitely want to be ahead of things. They want to be in the forefront. They're not going to be stealing a bunch of plays and things from other people. They want to be the one that people are coming to and trying to steal their stuff. I think it's a great thing. It's a really cool thing when you've got defenses and offenses that are acting that same way. Just like we like to do here offensively, we want to be ahead of the curve and be able to adapt and move. It makes it fun. It makes that chess game really come alive. It's going to be fun to see that happen."