The Seahawks clinched a playoff berth with their Week 16 win over the Rams, but they know they still have a lot more to accomplish over the final two weeks of the season. The Seahawks control their destiny to secure not only an NFC West title, but also the conference's top seed, but to do that, the first order business is earning another road victory against a tough Panthers squad that is fighting to stay on top of a tight race in the NFC South.

Here are three things to watch when the Seahawks face the Panthers on Sunday:

1. How will the Seahawks' process-driven approach help put a dramatic win behind them, and with a potential huge Week 18 game on the horizon?

From the outside looking in, Sunday's game might look like a trap game from the Seahawks. It's not that the Panthers are the type of team who can be overlooked—they're in first place, after all—but the Seahawks are coming off an incredibly emotional win over the Rams, one that saw them overcome a 16-point fourth-quarter deficit before winning in overtime. And not only did the Seahawks pull off a thrilling win over a division rival, doing so put them in first place in the NFC West and into the top spot in the NFC. Week 18, meanwhile, features a showdown with the 49ers which, depending on what happens this weekend, could be for the division title and the No. 1 seed.

But if the Seahawks are going to finish this season in the position they hope to be in, they know that they can't the high from last week's win linger into this week, nor can they afford to look ahead to what could be a winner-takes-all Week 18 game in Santa Clara.

Fortunately for the Seahawks, the approach that head coach Mike Macdonald brings to the job every day lends itself exactly to this situation. For Macdonald, like a lot of other coaches, the day-to-day and week-to-week process is the focus rather than the big-picture results. Yes, those big goals like a division title or the top seed matter, but to get to those things, the key is to take care of the daily work that can lead to a win this week, then do it again the following week.

"I think it's the same process for us," quarterback Sam Darnold said. "Getting a win is great. You hate losing, but at the end of the day, you just move on to the next week. That's how it always is in this league because, if you savor in that (win) for too long, it will come back to bite you, and the opposite way is true when you lose. If you get too down on a loss and carry it into next week, it can always affect you."

2. If it comes down to it late in the game, which clutch quarterback comes through?

A big reason why the Seahawks were able to come back and win last week's game in overtime was the play of quarterback Sam Darnold down the stretch. After two interceptions earlier in the game, Darnold played his best football in the fourth quarter and overtime, culminating in the game-winning drive on which he made some of his best throws of the game, if not the season. And that was hardly the first time that Darnold has risen to the occasion in big moments. He also led a drive to get the Seahawks in position for the winning field goal against the Colts a week earlier, and earlier this season he led winning drives in overtime against the Cardinals and in the fourth quarter of a win. Darnold also nearly opened his Seahawks career with a game-winning drive against the 49ers, but fumbled when his own lineman was driven into his arm on a pass attempt in the red zone, and in a Week 11 loss to the Rams, he drove the Seahawks from their own 1-yard line into fringe field goal range in the final minutes, though the game-winning 61-yard attempt missed.

"He stays even," receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba said of his quarterback. "He's even keeled and it's just a no quit mentality. Keep punching no matter what's thrown at you and that approach has, like I said, gone to the whole team, so it's been great."

The Panthers, meanwhile, are contending for a division title in no small part due to the late-game heroics of their quarterback, Bryce Young. The former No. 1 overall pick is tied for the league lead with six game-winning drives in the fourth quarter or overtime, and is a big reason why the Panthers are 7-1 in their last eight games decided by a one-score margin.

The Seahawks defense has been good at closing out games over the past month, and know that if it comes down to it, they'll have to be on top of their game if the ball is in Young's hand with the game on the line.

"What we call the fourth quarter and the situation that you're talking about is the Death Zone," said defensive end Leonard Williams. "That's something that we refer to it as on this team and that's a place where we like to thrive as a team. We know that (Young) is a good quarterback in the fourth quarter and we're going to consider the fourth quarter the Death Zone. So, as a defense, we're going to want to step to the occasion, step to the plate, and we're going to want to thrive in that situation."

3. Can Seattle's special teams come through with yet another game-changing play?

The Seahawks have won five straight games to move into first place, and one of the common threads in those wins, and really throughout the season, has been their play on special teams. That has been particularly true over the last three games, which featured a 100-yard Rashid Shaheed kick return to spark a big second half in a win over the Falcons, six Jason Myers field goals in a low-scoring win over the Colts, and a Shaheed punt return touchdown that helped spark the comeback against the Rams.

Between Myers' kicking—he leads the NFL in field goals this season, and has been great with varied kickoffs—Michael Dickson's punting, the coverage teams and the return ability of Shaheed, and before that rookie Tory Horton, the Seahawks have been, across the board, one of the NFL's best teams on special teams all season long.

And with big games looming, many of which are bound to go down to the wire, being able to make game-changing plays in that phase of the game could make all the difference.

"It's been a game changer," Macdonald said of Seattle's special teams play. "I felt like we were doing it last year, too we just weren't getting the results we wanted at certain times. But you see the coaching and the inputs daily, and you knew at some point that it was going to come to life."