The Seahawks are back at Lumen Field in Week 4 to host the Los Angeles Chargers, a game that features an intriguing coaching matchup between Seattle head coach Mike Macdonald and his one-time boss, Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh, who also happens to be the father of Seahawks special teams coordinator Jay Harbaugh.

While the Seahawks are off to a 2-1 start and looking to bounce back from their first loss since last November, the Chargers are looking to right the ship after a surprising 0-3 start. Despite the Chargers' rough beginning to 2026, the Seahawks know they'll be facing a talented, not to mention very motivated, opponent in Sunday's game.

"They're a really good football team," Macdonald said. "It's three games, so what kind of sample size are we talking about? They're a talented roster. They're well-coached, they're tough, and they're physical. They're sound schematically and they've got really good players across the board. They're a really good team."

In addition to a fun coaching matchup, here are 5 things to watch when the Seahawks host the Chargers on Sunday afternoon:

1. Can the Seahawks continue their winning ways at Lumen Field with a big stretch of home games coming up?

The Seahawks saw one winning streak -- the franchise-record 12-game streak that began last November -- come to an end last weekend, but what remains intact is the eight-game home winning streak they started early last season. Since losing two of their first three at Lumen Field in 2025, the Seahawks have won eight in a row at home, including playoff wins over the 49ers and Rams on their way to a Super Bowl title.

As last season showed -- as did Seattle's previous three Super Bowl runs -- homefield advantage in the postseason is a big deal. That's why Macdonald and the Seahawks put a big emphasis on recapturing that homefield advantage after his first season in Seattle in which the Seahawks went an impressive 7-1 on the road, but just 3-6 at Lumen Field. The improvement was drastic last season, and after two straight road games, the Seahawks play five of their next six at Lumen Field, making it critical that they can continue to maintain their homefield advantage.

"We definitely put a point of emphasis in the offseason, speaking of Jay (Harbaugh)," Macdonald said. "We did a lot of research in the offseason about how we warm up and what's our process throughout the weekend? I remember talking about that with everybody about trying to really dial in while we do what we do on a weekend basis. Some of it's schematics on like what we can get to and what we can't, really on both sides of the ball. When we had Sherm (Richard Sherman) come talk to the guys, I remember everybody talking about that. That was really great. I think it was just an all hands on deck (situation) knowing that we needed to create an advantage here. The 12s were doing their part, but we weren't. We just had to step our game up."

The Seahawks stepped up their home game last season, and if they're going to be the team they, and most everyone else thinks they can be in 2026, they'll need to do so again with a big stretch of home games coming up.

2. Does Jaxon Smith-Njigba continue his historic start to the season?

A year ago, Jaxon Smith-Njigba put together one of the best receiving seasons in league history, compiling 1,793 yards and 10 touchdowns on 119 catches to earn the 2025 NFL AP Offensive Player of The Year. He also became just the fourth player in league history, along with Drew Pearson (1977), Jerry Rice (1989 and 1994) and current teammate Cooper Kupp (2021) to lead the league in receiving for a Super Bowl-winning team. Additionally, Kupp and Smith-Njigba are the only two players to accomplish both of those feats while also earning Offensive Player of the Year honors.

So great was Smith-Njigba's 2025 season that a lot of people probably figured it wasn't repeatable, yet here he is, three games into the 2026 season, somehow looking like he might be even better this year. Through three games, Smith-Njigba has 27 catches for 405 yards and six touchdowns, all of which lead the NFL (tied with the Saints' Chris Olave in receptions), and last week he joined Rice as one of only two players in NFL history to start a season with at least 120 receiving yards and a touchdown in each of his first three games. He also joined Marvin Harrison Sr. as one of two players to have at least 400 receiving yards and six touchdowns in the first three games of a season.

So what's next for Smith-Njigba? Well, with another big game, he can match the accomplishment of yet another all-time great receiver, Randy Moss, who is currently the only player to start a season with 100 receiving yards and a touchdown in each of his first four games, something Moss did in 2007 on his way to setting an NFL record with 23 touchdown receptions.

"He just is a natural, true ballplayer," safety Julian Love said Thursday. "He was born to do this thing. And I think that's what makes him special. There's no weakness to his game. He could get out of routes, he could run, yards after catch, hands, all the things. He's a natural football player.

"He's special. Jax, he just can do everything well. You can scheme for it all you want, but then you see the red zone touchdown for Coop (Kupp). OK, you can double Jax, but then we have other weapons. I think Fleury is doing a good job of just spinning the wheel, and we're going to continue to progress on offense, but yeah, 11's a real deal player. And he's so humble about it. That's the best thing about being with him each day. He attacks his work, and you could follow us around for the whole day, and you would not know he's as special as he is because of how humble he is."

3. Can the Seahawks clean up the turnovers while also creating more takeaways?

After struggling with turnovers at times in 2025, the Seahawks were able to clean things up at the most opportune time, playing turnover-free ball in their NFC West-clinching Week 18 win over the 49ers, as well in all three of their postseason games, making them the first Super Bowl champion to get through an entire postseason without a turnover. The Seahawks extended their turnover-free streak to five games in their season-opening win over the Patriots, but saw it come to an end with a fumble lost in the Week 2 win at Arizona. That turnover, a Jadarian Price fumble, didn't hurt the Seahawks in a dominant win over the Cardinals, but last week, Seattle's three turnovers proved to be very costly in a close loss. Those turnovers -- a Price fumble and two Sam Darnold interceptions, one of which was returned for a touchdown -- led to 21 points for the Commanders and were the biggest reason why Washington was able to win despite being outgained 437-258 and having 11 fewer first downs than the Seahawks.

On the other side of the ball, Seattle's defense was unable to force a turnover against the Commanders, and had only one, a Julian Love interception, against the Cardinals. The Seahawks are good enough to be in the game even when they're hurting themselves in the turnover battle, as was the case last week; they're pretty much unbeatable when they're coming out on top in that all-important category, posting a 14-0 record under Macdonald when winning the turnover battle.

4. Does the run game get back on track?

Last week, the Seahawks were feeling pretty good about their run game coming out of a win in Arizona. Not only did the Seahawks total an impressive 162 rushing yards on 40 carries, they were able to close the game out with the ground attack, grinding out a 16-play, 70-yard touchdown drive that took 10 minutes, 14 seconds off the clock. In Washington, however, the Seahawks were limited to just 44 rushing yards, instead leaning on a productive passing game to move the ball. Because it's early in the season, and because the Seahawks have seen so much variance in the run game so far, nobody is panicking about last week's lack of production, but the Seahawks do know they need to get better in that area for the offense to function at its best.

"It's a process," Macdonald said. "If you would have asked me this last week, we ran the ball like (40) times for X amount of yards and closed the game out. We were excited, so I'm not going to totally flip the switch on the answer. Our guys are running off the rock, they're playing hard, I think we're practicing extremely well, I think our staff's working well together. Sometimes you just don't get the run game off the ground in a certain game, and you don't hit the panic button, you just go back to work and try to find more solutions, keep trying to solve problems and go try to make it better. But I see a lot of good things. I see physically play, I see decisive running, I see guys trying to finish blocks. Can we be better? Absolutely, but we've just got to keep pounding away at the details and the process, and it'll come to life."

5. Does Leonard Williams continue his hot start to the season?

Seahawks defensive tackle Leonard Williams has done a lot of really good things in his 12-year NFL career, including back-to-back Pro-Bowl selections in his first two full seasons with the Seahawks, as well as a second-team All-Pro nod last season. But in 2026, the 32-year-old seems to have somehow found an even higher level to his play, demonstrating why he was ranked the league's top-ranked interior defensive lineman in an ESPN offseason survey of coaches, scouts and executives.

Through three games, Williams has three sacks, one in each game, and five tackles for loss, making him the team leader in both of those categories. He is one of three players in the league to start this season with a sack in each of his first three games along with Buffalo's Greg Rousseau and Cleveland's Mason Graham, whose streak came to an end in the Browns' Thursday night win over Pittsburgh.

Seattle's defense, which managed only a pair of sacks in Sunday's game at Washington, will be looking to bring more pressure against a Chargers offense that has allowed three sacks in each of the past two games, and it's a safe bet that if that happens, Williams will be leading the charge.

"We've laughed about it and called it 'Vintage Leo,'" defensive coordinator Aden Durde said of Williams' fast start. "He's just getting off the rock. The thing he does best is that he plays when he is on line, and he's getting off the rock and going forwards. He is playing dominant football. (Justin) Hinds and I were talking about it the other day, I think he's playing at a very high level. His ability to play in multiple spots has, and I don't know if it's given him a newfound energy, I have to talk to him, but he's doing a great job."