The Seahawks have a quick turnaround this week, facing the Bears on Thursday night, and an always difficult challenge, but one the team is embracing as a chance to move on quickly from a tough loss to the Vikings. The Seahawks have a lot riding on the next two weeks (we get more into that below), but before we focus on Thursday's matchup with the Bears, it's time once again to open up the mailbag and answer some questions from you, the fans.

As always, thanks to everyone who asked questions this week, and apologies if I wasn't able to get to yours this time around. And remember, the mailbag is always open for submissions at Seahawks.com/mailbag.

One other quick note before we dive in, I see your questions on the futures of several prominent players who are still under contract next season, and while I get the interest in that topic, and can also acknowledge that the business side of the NFL means not everyone plays out their contracts, it's not really my place, on the team website, to speculate on a player getting cut, traded, etc., so you'll have to forgive me for ignoring those.

@holliwinters57.bsky.social, while using the always excellent "so you're telling me there's a chance" gif from Dumb and Dumber, asks, "Do we still have a chance at the playoffs?"

A: Indeed, the Seahawks do have a chance, and there are some pretty easy to explain ways to win the NFC West and make the postseason, and some rather complicated ones.

After losing their last two games to fall out of first place, the Seahawks no longer control their own playoff destiny but there's a couple different ways they can still make it.

The NFL put out its weekly playoff clinching scenarios on Tuesday, including the ways in which the Rams can clinch the division before they host the Seahawks in Week 18.

If the Rams (9-6), who host Arizona on Saturday night, win that game, they would clinch the NFC West with a Seahawks (8-7) loss or a tie.

If the Rams lose to the Cardinals, the Week 18 game between the Seahawks and Rams will be for the NFC West, regardless of if the Seahawks win or lose on Thursday. That's because, if both teams were to lose, the Seahawks would be a game behind the Rams going into Week 18, and if they were to win that game, they would win the tiebreaker of better NFC West record, again, assuming a Rams loss to the Cardinals.

If both the Rams and Seahawks win this week, however, it's not as simple, because in that scenario, a Seahawks Week 18 win would leave both teams with the same record, a head-to-head split, the same NFC West record, the same record in common games, and the same conference record. The fifth tiebreaker after all of that is strength of victory, and heading into Week 17, the Rams have the edge there, thanks largely to the fact that they have wins over the Bills and Vikings.

And thanks to that strength of victory lead, the Rams could clinch this week with a win even if the Seahawks also win, doing so if they get 3.5 or more wins from the Vikings (vs. Packers), Bills (vs. Jets), 49ers (vs. Lions), Commanders (vs. Falcons), Bengals (vs. Broncos) and Browns (vs. Dolphins).

So basically for the Seahawks, to still be in the NFC West race after Sunday, they need either a Cardinals win over the Rams, in which case Week 18 is for the division title no matter what, or if the Rams win Saturday, the Seahawks need to win, and they need four wins from Packers, Jets, Lions, Falcons, Broncos or Dolphins out of the above six games.

Got it? Good.

@ililly31.bsky.social asks, "Why won't the Seahawks run the ball? We clearly abandoned a working run game in a one-possession game. Mike seemed to be cool with that during his postgame presser. Is it (offensive coordinator) Ryan Grubb, is it him, is it both?" @brianmphillip, among others, also asked about run game.

A: The Seahawks have been pass-heavy at times for a number of reasons—sometimes they're playing from behind, other times the run game just couldn't get going early, and other times still, they just like the matchups better in the passing games. From hearing Macdonald talk about it after the game on Sunday and again on Monday, it sounds like it was more the latter of those three this time around, with the Seahawks only handing the ball off to running backs 12 times in the game.

After the game, Macdonald said of the lack of rush attempts, "We've got to start faster on defense and put ourselves in better position. Some of it was Minnesota's personnel groups, how they're matching us. I think in some of those either-or spots when we are able to pass it, that was efficient as well."

And a day later, he added, "We just have to keep chasing, keep moving the ball forward. How far that manifests itself based off the game plan, we can do a better job of that and so that's stuff that we're thinking about doing, so some of the things that Minnesota was doing got us out of some runs earlier in the game and we made them pay and some of the early down pass stuff, so you just start looking at straight numbers of just more going on than just called runs and called passes but overall we've got to do a better job of moving the ball forward."

In other words, it seems like Macdonald is more interested in having early-down success, regardless of how that happens, to avoid the third-and-long situation that contributed to a 2 for 10 day on third down against the Vikings.

As for if the lack of runs is a Ryan Grubb or Mike Macdonald thing, the answer is always going to be both. Yes, Grubb is in charge of the offense, but ultimately, it's Macdonald's team, so he obviously can voice his opinions to his OC and/or suggest/demand changes if he feels it necessary. And whether or not Macdonald is, "cool" with it or not, as the question suggests, even if he weren't (and I'm not saying he is or isn't), most NFL coaches aren't going to make it known publicly if they have issues with how their coaches or players are doing things; they'd rather address any concerns internally.

@KateOHareWrites asks, "The team's only consistency seems to be inconsistency, and that's not new to this season. What's behind that?"

A: Macdonald himself addressed this topic on Monday, noting that while the Seahawks have done a lot of really good things this season, "we’re just not as consistent as we want to be right now."

Whether or not that's new to this season, what has happened in the past doesn't really seem too relevant given that the Seahawks have an entirely new coaching staff, but when it comes to this particular team, the most simple answer is probably just the fact that the Seahawks are finding their way under a new coaching staff with new schemes on both sides of the ball. No team wants to go through growing pains or is just willing to accept it and not try like crazy to minimize those issues, but the fact is that there is a lot of learning going on when a team makes as significant of changes as Seattle did this offseason, and that transition almost always comes with some bumps in the road.

I will also point out here that, with the exception of very few teams, inconsistency is pretty normal in the NFL. The league has a lot of rules in place to create parity, and with that, just about every team has a shot in any given game. Even teams that win divisions and win titles have a random/bad loss or two on their schedule more often than not, and even the worst teams, with a few exceptions, pulls off a couple of upsets or gives a big scare to an opponent with a far better record. Seahawks fans are, of course, going to notice those swings a lot more with their team because that's who they watch every week, but my hunch is that if you dedicated a season to watching just about any other team, you'd be wondering about that team's inconsistencies in certain areas throughout a season. That's just the nature of the NFL, and that's very much by design.

@wenfot asks, "If you were hosting a New Year's Eve party, which Seahawks would you invite and why"

A: I'm going to go off the roster and go with Blitz. For starters, no 20 or even 30-something player is going to want to go to a party hosted by a writer in his 40s. Secondly, I have kids, and at this stage of life, having a party with other families with kids, one that doesn't go until midnight, sounds about my speed, and those kids would be a lot more excited about Blitz showing up to a party than any player, because, well, they're little kids and mascots are fun.