Not long after the Seahawks clinched the NFC West title and the conference's No. 1 seed, receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba spoke to the significance of that accomplishment, which meant a first-round bye and homefield advantage.

"That was a goal that we talked about since our first meeting," Smith-Njigba said after his team's Week 18 win over the 49ers.

And when Smith-Njigba said first meeting, he wasn't exaggerating.

It was on April 8, 2024, the very first time Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald gathered his team together for a meeting at the start of offseason workouts, that he laid out the vision for his team.

"We've got a hell of a program ready for you guys," Macdonald said from the front of the auditorium at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center. "And one of the things I want you guys to feel going through this program is that we have a vision for you and this football team."

And 21 months before the Seahawks will host the Rams in the NFC championship game, Macdonald told his players to picture this very moment, and told them how they'd get there.

"Today, I'm going to take you here now, so stay with me," he said in that April meeting. "I want us to take a minute here and fast forward to January, NFC championship, it's 30-something degrees, it's wet, it's windy. It's shitty for them, but it's just right for us. We're loose, we're focused, we're confident, we just spent the last nine months stacking every opportunity that we had to put us in that position. The team across from us in the other locker room, they've seen the tape, they know what they're in for, 11 guys playing as one, every snap. They know that we're like that. They know that they're facing a bunch of men that won't give up, they know they're facing a team that won't die, that won't quit. They know, it's inevitable. So let's go to work."

Macdonald was a little off on his weather forecast—it's supposed to partly cloudy with temperatures in the 40s on Sunday—but otherwise he was pretty spot-on with that vision he presented to the team almost two years ago.

The Seahawks are a relentless, physical team that plays, in a phrase that has come to define the team, "a style nobody wants to play," just like Macdonald described in that meeting. The team had yet to adapt its 12 as One mantra, but as Macdonald said, they are 11 players playing as one. And Lumen Field, once again, is a cauldron of noise that makes life hell for opponents, with the Seahawks having won six straight at home. And most importantly, the Seahawks stacked the wins it took to play a home game with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line.

"That's the message he was sending," outside linebacker Uchenna Nwosu said when recalling that first team meeting. "I remember when I first got to Seattle, I'd never really pictured that. It had always just been like, 'Let's go, let's have a good year, let's everybody get right, everybody come prepared, ready to play.' But when we first got in the room, he talked about, 'Picture yourself there.' And that's an important part of playing football, visualization, so for him to start off the meeting with that, you know where his mind is, you know what his vision is. He sees the pieces that he has on the team, he sees where his team's capable of going, and with the right coaching we can reach that goal, and he was able to put that play in in two years."

Said running back Kenneth Walker III "It's showed us he had a vision for this team and was confident in that vision."

As Nwosu noted, it's not unusual for a coach to kick off training camp or offseason workouts talking about big-picture goals. Every coach wants his team to expect success. But where Macdonald's message differed, causing it to really hit home, is that he talked to player about how it was going to happen, and had them visualize the actual prize for that hard work.

"You knew he'd get us there; you didn't know it was going to be this quickly," receiver Jake Bobo said. "To be honest, every head coach I've been around at every level, whatever the top of the mountain is, whether it's getting to a Super Bowl, getting to a national championship, getting to a conference championship, that's the goal, and you expect in the first meeting for them to address that.

"The way he addressed it though, it was a little different. It's not like, 'OK, let's get there.' It's, 'This is what it's going to look like when we get there,' which was cool. You come to Seattle, you picture the rain, you picture the noise, and you want to be a team that's centered around that. The way he put that in our mind's eye right then and there, that was cool how he did that. After that first meeting, everybody was bought in."

That buy-in, combined with the right combination of talent, scheme and work ethic, has the Seahawks hosting an NFC championship game for the first time in over a decade. Just like Macdonald told the team would be the case in that first team meeting.