The Seahawks and Rams have been two of the league's best teams all season, so it's only fitting that their Week 16 showdown will come in prime time, with the NFC West powers battling on Thursday Night Football to see who will take the division lead heading into the final two weeks of the season.

The Rams and Seahawks come into the game with matching 11-3 records, making this the first Thursday night game between two teams with 11 or more wins. Thursday night's game won't decide anything, not with two games left and not with the 49ers lurking just a game back at 10-4, but whoever comes out on Thursday will be in control of their own destiny.

But as much as this looks, from the outside, like one of the biggest games in the NFL this season, the Seahawks know they can't make it bigger than it is and lose track of the process that got them to this point.

"Look, I get it. It's y'all's job to put all the meaning behind it; it's our job to go play great football," Macdonald said after Wednesday's practice. "It's all good, I get it, it's exciting, but every game's exciting."

Here are five things to watch when the Seahawks host the Rams on Thursday night:

1. Which team can 'Embrace the moment' and take control atop the NFC West?

While players and coaches from both teams will try not to overhype this game, there's no denying the significance of the outcome when it comes to playoff ramifications. If the Seahawks win, they take a one game lead in the race for the No. 1 seed and the division title, whereas if the Rams win, they not only would take a one-game lead over the Seahawks, it would essentially be a two-game lead because, in that scenario, they'd have a head-to-head advantage over Seattle.

Again, the 49ers are also a factor, especially with a Seahawks win, which would leave the 49ers and Rams both with four losses, and Seattle still facing a trip to Santa Clara in Week 18. But while this is not a two-team race, by any means, the top two teams have a chance to take control of their playoff destiny on Thursday night.

The way Macdonald see is, the Seahawks aren't focused on the magnitude of this one game, but they can appreciate that the work they've done up to this point has put them in a situation to be playing in such a high-stakes late-season game.

"There's a lot of stuff that happens in the NFL, and my message to our team was, 'Hey, we are really fortunate and blessed and should feel really confident in the work that we've done up to this point to put ourselves in this position where we have a lot of great players that are ready to go,'" Macdonald said. "We trust each other. I feel like we're a connected team. I feel like we're a tough team, so let's go do it. Let's go rip it. That's where we're at."

And while, to Macdonald's point, this game is a chance to build off the work the Seahawks have done to get to this point, players know they can't hide from the significance of December game against two 11-win teams.

"Let's just say what it is," safety Julian Love said. "Right now, we're fighting for the No. 1 seed in the NFC.' There's a lot of power in that, especially being in Seattle with a great home stadium. That's just where we are, we have a shot to do that. It's a team that we've seen and we lost to in the past. We didn't play our cleanest football, so it was close. We've just got to go out and just execute. You can appreciate the hype, you can try not to hide from it, just face it head on. That's kind of how my approach is, embrace the moment."

2. Does Sam Darnold and the offense have a cleaner game than in the previous meeting between these teams?

When the Seahawks played in Los Angeles in Week 11, they outgained the Rams 414-249, and had 26 first downs to LA's 12. That first-down total was the Rams' lowest this season, and the yardage total was their second worst, while Seattle gained more yards against the Rams than any other opponent this season. The Seahawks also were better on third down, going 7 for 16 compared to the Rams' 2 -for-11 mark.

So how did the Seahawks still find themselves playing from behind throughout an eventual 21-19 loss? The Rams going 3 for 4 in the red zone compared to Seattle's 1 for 4 mark was certainly a factor, as was Ethan Evans uncorking one of the best punts you'll ever see, a 50-yarder that went out of bounds at the 1-yard line to up the degree of difficulty on Seattle's final drive by a considerable margin. But the single biggest reason why the Seahawks wound up losing is that they committed four turnovers, all of them Sam Darnold interceptions, while the Rams had just one turnover. Those turnovers not only took scoring chances away from the Seahawks, they also gave the Rams short fields that led to two of their three touchdowns.

Since that game, Darnold has been intercepted only once in the last four games, and the Seahawks have been turnover free in two of those games. If the Seahawks can continue that recent trend of better ball security, they'll have a much better shot of reversing the outcome from the previous meeting.

"We're excited about this challenge," Darnold said. "Obviously, it's a divisional game, and playing these guys last time wasn't my best effort. I feel like as an offense we've just got to continue to do what we've been practicing, stay on the details. But again, this team has a very good defense. I think I said it last time, and it held true, matching the pressure with the coverage, smart DBs, guys that know what they're doing, and obviously a really good scheme. We're excited about the challenge and ready to go."

3. Can the Seahawks start faster on offense?

In a Week 7 win over the Texans, the Seahawks scored two first-quarter touchdowns to take a double-digit lead that helped them stay in control throughout the game. Two weeks after that, coming out of their bye week, Seattle scored one first-quarter touchdown, then piled up 24 second-quarter points on the way to a lopsided road win over Washington. And then the week after that, the Seahawks scored 21 first-quarter points and 38 in the first half, albeit with the help of two defensive touchdowns, on their way to a blowout win over the Cardinals.

Since that game, however, the Seahawks have managed only one offensive touchdown, a long Jaxon Smith-Njigba catch, in the first halves of their past five games, and they scored only six points in the first half in each of the past two games. The first of those five games was the Week 11 loss to the Rams, but the Seahawks have won four in a row since, so the slow starts on offense haven't cost them games, but they also know they need to start making more of their first-half possessions against teams as good as the Rams.

"That's got to improve quite a bit, "offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak said. "Every week, that's a big point of emphasis. Every week you're trying to get points on the board early and not something that we've done as of late. This is one of the best defenses in the league, so they're going to make it hard for us."

4. What type of personnel do the Rams deploy on offense, and how do the Seahawks counter?

Throughout this season, one of the storylines around Sean McVay's Rams offense has been their heavy use of 13 personnel (one back, three tight ends, one receiver). They were in 13 personnel for 61 percent of their snaps in last week's win over the Lions, averaging 8.4 yards per play, according to NFL Next Gen Stats, and have run a significant amount of their offense out of 13 personnel throughout the second half of the season. That's something of a departure for McVay, whose offenses have traditionally operated out of 11 personnel (one back, one tight end, three receivers), and it's proven to be an affective wrinkle this season, at least in most of their games. The Seahawks, however, had a good plan for that attack in Week 11, holding the Rams to 2.7 yards per play when they were in 13 personnel for 36 percent of their offensive snaps.

And thanks in no small part to the emergence of rookie Nicke Emmanwori, the Seahawks were able to defend 13 personnel while keeping their preferred nickel package on the field, matching LA's 13 personnel with five defensive backs on 66.7 percent of those plays. That helped the Seahawks hold the Rams to 1 for 4 passing out of 13 personnel.

And with receiver Davante Adams doubtful for the game due to a hamstring injury, the Seahawks know they'll need to again be prepared for the Rams to deploy multiple tight-end sets.

"It seems like (McVay) is on the cutting edge of everything offense these past five to eight years," Love said. "Right now, they're playing the game in 13; you'll see other teams now, in the next year, the year after that, play the game in 13, taking notes from him. He works his personnel. Right now, obviously, Colby (Parkinson) is playing really well. The two tight ends are playing really well, that rookie they like (Terrance Ferguson) is a skillful tight end. So they're just trying to present issues. Right now, as the league's getting smaller, they go back to being big. It's interesting to see and kind of dissect our plan of attack for the big personnel, especially with 17 (Adams) being down possibly."

5. Can Seattle's stingy run defense avoid the big plays this time around.

The Seahawks have had one of the league's best run defenses all season, limiting opponents to just 3.8 yards per carry, the second lowest opponent average in the league, and they've allowed the third fewest rushing yards.

In Week 11, the Rams rushed for 119 yards, which on the surface doesn't seem like too bad of a total, but they averaged 5.4 yards per carry, making them one of only two teams, along with Arizona, to average 5.0 yards per carry or better. A big factor in that average were a pair of first-quarter runs for Kyren Williams, who gained 30 on one and 34 on the other, with the second run setting up a touchdown.

"We gave up some runs, and they had a good plan," defensive coordinator Aden Durde said. "They got us and I think they had two or three explosive runs that gave them an opportunity to score. When you're playing the football that we have the vision of how we want to play as a collective, you don't let them run the ball. You have to keep working, fighting and playing to allow that to happen."

Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford is rightly in the thick of the MVP conversation, but for the Seahawks defense to be at its best, it first has to stop a Rams running game that has been one of the league's most efficient this season.