As training camp unfolded, two of the Seahawks' veteran leaders, Julian Love and Leonard Williams, reflected on their NFL journeys, which included time as teammates with the Giants, and discussed how teams and opportunities like Seattle's don't come along often.

Coming off a 10-7 season in Mike Macdonald's first year as a head coach, a 2024 campaign that saw the Seahawks win six of their last eight games while improving significantly on defense, players knew this year's team had a chance to do something special.

And for players who have been in the league for a while, they also recognized how important it is to capitalize on the instances when the right mix of talent, scheme and cohesiveness come together to turn a good team into a great one. Through the regular season, the Seahawks have done their part to seize this opportunity, posting a 14-3 record that allowed them to capture an NFC West title and the conference's No. 1 seed, and now, beginning with Saturday night's divisional round game against the 49ers, they'll try to make this a truly memorable season with what they do in the postseason.

"When you look around in camp, you have a sense—this is my seventh (year) in the league—you look around and have a sense of, 'All right, we've got guys right now. We feel like we have the coaching staff in place to be successful,' Love said. "Things sometimes just line up for you."

Sensing that early, Williams and Love talked, half jokingly and half seriously, with rookie safety Nick Emmanwori about the importance to hitting the ground running in his rookie season, knowing he had a chance to be a big part of their defense.

"It was like training camp where me and (Williams) are talking to a young Nick. I'm like, 'We understand you're a rookie, but there is urgency here. A lot of these guys, myself included, it's like you go years in a career just trying to grind to make a playoff spot. Now we've got a shot to do something special. You're going to be a part of it, but we need you to be a part of it this year. There is no weaning process.' And so that's just what it is. We embraced and just said, 'Man, thank goodness we got here.'"

For the Seahawks, the "here" they got to is being the NFC's top seed, something they have done three other times, and in each of those instances, the 2005, 2013 and 2014 teams used homefield advantage and a bye to advance to the Super Bowl. To make if four for four and join those teams as the best in franchise history, the Seahawks know they have to stick with the same formula that got them to a 14-3 regular season, and not start focusing on big-picture goals like a Super Bowl.

"We are close," said linebacker Ernest Jones IV, who knows what it takes to win a Super Bowl, having done so with the 2021 Rams. "We're close to something that a lot people don't get a chance to do. But if you start thinking about that game or that opportunity, you miss out on the good moments you'll have as you're going through this process. But ultimately it takes one game at a time. We've got to handle San Fran first and then whoever they send next to us so we can get to the ultimate goal."

Williams, who played in only two playoff games in the first 10 years of his career, echoed Love's appreciation for the position his team has put itself in, as well as Jones' emphasis on sticking with the process that got them there.

"It means a lot for me to be in this situation," Williams said. "I've addressed it, talked about it before to the press. I've talked about it to my teammates. It's rare to be in a situation like this. The best part about our team is we're treating it the same every week, and I think that's what's gotten us to this point. We can't make this moment bigger than Week 18, Week 1. It's just another week for us. It's Week 19. It's definitely special for me to have a home playoff game, though."

And while the Seahawks have done everything this week to make this a normal week of preparation, there's no getting around the fact that Lumen Field will be rocking in an a manner few, if any, players have experienced.

"I think this group has learned how to feed into that," Jones said. "We learned how to feed into it and be able to calm it down when we have to calm it down and turn it up when we have to. So expecting the environment to be electric. I'm excited. I can't wait."

Said Macdonald, "Of course you're going enjoy it. But I feel like our guys are like this every week, especially being at home. There is a lot of extra energy being at home that you kind of have to channel to make sure you can go play the way you want to play. The guys, we definitely feel it. Around the city it's definitely buzzing, which is literally why we do what we do, is to bring wins back to our community and our team."