The Seahawks earned the victory they needed in Week 17, beating the Bears on Thursday night, but not much else went right for them the rest of the weekend.

Starting with the Rams' win over the Cardinals Saturday night, several results took place over the weekend that led to the Rams clinching the NFC West Sunday night, eliminating the Seahawks from playoff contention.

"It wasn't optimal, obviously," Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said. "It's disappointing, but you've got to make the best of it for the rest of the week."

If the Seahawks can beat the Rams on Sunday to improve to 10-7, they will miss the postseason by losing out on the fifth tiebreaker, strength of victory, after finishing with he same record, division record, conference record and record against common opponents. And with such a razor thin margin between a division title and being home for the postseason, it will be easy to look back and lament every close loss. But as Macdonald noted, the time for looking back at what went wrong isn't this week; for now the only goal is to get ready for a game and try to close things out with a win.

"Right now is not the time to diagnose that type of stuff, right now is the time to, let's go to work this week, let's make the best of this opportunity, we've got one more opportunity to take the field as a team, put our best foot forward, get to 10 wins," Macdonald said. "Let's focus on that, then once the season is over, which is going to happen earlier than we want, we'll digest all that stuff and make the proper conclusions and all those type of things."

The Seahawks were back at work Monday for an extra practice following a weekend off, and the message to the team, Macdonald said, is that with or without a chance to make the playoffs, the goal this week should be the same.

"For us, the first thing is it's an opportunity for us to go and get 10 wins, and that's what's important right now," Macdonald said. "There's a standard here of what we're trying to establish, and show off our football character of what type of team we are, what type of people we are, and how we're going to play. So, the situation has changed, but the situation really hasn't changed to a certain extent as well. We're going to play a good football team that won our division, and we want to get to 10 wins."

And for Macdonald, playing up to a standard and chasing a 10^th win means the Seahawks won't be resting any healthy players for a chance to look at younger backups.

"We're going to go play to win the game," Macdonald said when asked about that possibility.

Macdonald later added, "Normal game. If someone is at risk of making something worse long term, then we'll definitely consider that, but guys are going to want to play. So if it's safe for them to be out there, they're going to be out there."

Heading into Thursday's game, the Seahawks knew that even a win might not be enough to get them into the postseason, which made Macdonald proud of the effort the team showed while facing uncertainty.

"We played hard," he said. "We talk about building a standard here of how we're going to play the game. Our football team played hard that game, so that's something to be proud of. We played tough, it's not as productive as you'd want it, but there were some good things we can build off of, just like the rest of the season, and onward we go."

And now, with the playoffs out of reach, the team again has a chance to show its character and finish the season strong.

"It's not an optimum condition on how you're going to play, but us as a football team and an organization, we have a really high standard about how we want to play," Macdonald said. "That's what we're chasing. So our football character hopefully gets shown to the world about what we're about and how we operate, and let's go be those guys that we've been the whole season."

Injury Update

Seahawks cornerback Josh Jobe left Thursday's game with a knee injury, but Macdonald gave a positive update on the injury, which was the only one reported from the game.

"He's doing good," Macdonald said. "He had a really good weekend. We'll take it day by day. We'll take this thing throughout the week to kind of figure out what the plan is."