When the Seahawks face the Rams in Los Angeles on Sunday, it will be a showdown between two of the NFL's best teams, a pair of 7-2 squads that have each won four consecutive games in convincing fashion.

And in addition to being a contest between two great teams, Sunday's game at SoFi even comes complete with some juicy subplots.

There's the chess match between Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald, one of the game's best and most innovative defensive minds, and Rams coach Sean McVay, one of the game's best and most innovative offensive minds. Then there's the fact that Cooper Kupp will be facing his former team for the first time after a stellar eight-year career with the Rams. Linebacker Ernest Jones IV, if he's healthy enough to return from a knee injury, will also be facing his former team. And like so many matchups between top teams, both offenses will be led by elite quarterbacks, Sam Darnold for the Seahawks and Matthew Stafford for the Rams. And yes, Darnold is also facing the team that knocked him and the Vikings out of the playoffs last year while sacking him nine times.

But while Seahawks coaches and players are quick to acknowledge that they're facing one heck of an opponent this week, they are also being careful to not make this game anything bigger than what it is—the next game on a 17-game schedule.

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

When Macdonald was asked if this game was a good test for his team, he acknowledged it was, but then qualified that response by adding that every week is a good test in its own way.

"I'm going to say yes, but if you had asked me that last week, I would say yes," Macdonald said. "Every time we go out there, it's going to be a test of what kind of team we can become. This is a different scenario that we haven't necessarily been in yet, but last week was a scenario we haven't been in. We haven't been in a situation where we're coming off a decisive victory and coming back home. So that was last week, this is this week, now we're going to play the Rams on the road for the first time this season. Every week's a new challenge and the guys have been up for them."

Cornerback Devon Witherspoon also didn't want to buy into the idea of this game being a measuring stick for the team.

"No, I just see it as another match up, a great team we've got to play," he said. "It's a divisional game, we know how they play. We know how they're going to come, the attitude they're going to bring. It's going to be a tough, fun, and physical football game."

It has been a while since a Seahawks regular season game was garnering this much national attention—at least a midseason game and not an end-of-season one with direct playoff implications—and it's understandable why. Not only are both teams 7-2, they're arguably two of the most complete teams in the league. The Rams and Seahawks are the only two teams in the NFL to rank in the top five in both scoring offense and scoring defense, the Seahawks are second in the league and the Rams are third in point differential, and neither team has trailed in a game since early in their Week 6 victories.

So the hype, at least externally, is understandable. But for Macdonald and company, the best way to show they are an elite team on Sunday is to prepare like one throughout the week without getting caught up in all the external noise surrounding this matchup.

"It's just noise," Macdonald said. "We've got to keep our eye on the process and focus, I say it every week, let's just focus on us and focus on us being the best football team we possibly can be every time we walk out on the field. I think our guys have been doing that."

For Darnold, whose standout 2024 season ended at SoFi Stadium, there are lessons he can learn from that performance, but he also knows this upcoming game can't be about proving anything in relation to a previous game played for a different team.

"It's about just understanding who we are, who I am as a person, understanding the guys in the locker room, and the coaching staff," Darnold said. "We're all working so hard every single week. When we do get a win, we enjoy it on Monday, but it's on to the next by Monday night or Tuesday, and then we're focused on next week."

For all the good memories he made in L.A, Kupp has made it clear this week that the focus is on helping his team win this week, not on showing his old team what it’s missing out on, and he knows the key to that will be keeping the focus on what's important.

"The coaches do a great job in terms of the preparation because that's what it is at the end of the day, if you're stepping on the field and you feel like a moment's too big, well then you just didn't prepare yourself," Kupp said. "You do your preparation, and you're good. You've played this game, and all the other stuff, all the other factors, everything that happens outside of the things in this building, that stuff real quickly goes away if you do your preparation the right way. We do a good job of that, and we harp on it all the time."