For the second time in three weeks, the Seahawks will face the Arizona Cardinals, and the stakes couldn't be much higher for a regular season game in early December. The Seahawks (7-5) currently hold a one-game lead over the Cardinals and Rams, who are both 6-6, meaning the Seahawks could open up a two-game lead over Arizona with a win on Sunday, while also holding the head-to-head tiebreaker with two wins over Arizona, while Cardinals could create a first-place tie with a win, while also gaining a division-record tiebreaker advantage.

"For our football team, this is obviously a huge week for us," said Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald, whose team is 4-1 on the road so far this season. "We've been talking about playoff football coming out of the bye, and this one doesn't disappoint either. It's a road playoff game. That's the type of mentality that we're having. Really good football team we're about to play, back at their place."

With that in mind, here are five things to watch in a big NFC West showdown in the desert:

1. What does Leonard Williams do for an encore?

Leonard Williams could have, and probably should have, won NFC Defensive Player of the Week honors for his performance against the Cardinals in Week 12. Instead, that award went to safety Coby Bryant, who returned an interception for a touchdown in the game. Undeterred by his Week 12 snub, Williams won player of the week honors for his play against the Jets a week later, one-upping Bryant with an even longer pick-six, a 92-yarder, while adding two more sacks. And over his past two games, Williams now has 4.5 sacks, that aforementioned pick-six, six tackles for loss, two passes defensed and a blocked extra point in the past two weeks.

The Cardinals will almost certainly change things up to try to limit the damage done by Williams, but the way he has been playing the past two weeks, it's hard to imagine that he won't still find ways to impact the game.

"He's a pretty rare guy," defensive coordinator Aden Durde said. "I think he shows it in different phases of a game. He has done a great job, and like I've been saying to you guys, he's been doing it all year. I think sometimes the production or the lack of production in certain situations mask those things, but he's been doing those things all year."

2. Which team adjusts better after Arizona and Seattle faced each other just two weeks ago?

Thanks to a somewhat unusual, though hardly unprecedented, schedule quirk, the Seahawks and Cardinals are playing each other twice in a three-game span. And that brings up the question, how much can, and will, both teams change in that short span? Will Sunday's game look like an extended half of the previous meeting at Lumen Field, or will one or both teams make big changes to try to throw off their opponent? And for that matter, how significant can those changes even be so soon after the previous meetings?

"I don't think we look at it through the lens of whether it's more difficult or easier," Macdonald said. "It just kind of is what it is. The information that you get in is a little more recent than normal when you play a team the second time, but I think you look at it like any other week. When you play a team twice, what went into the game plan, how you felt during the game, how we debriefed, and obviously, you're going to apply that to what's happened over the last week or so, and kind of the game that was sandwiched in between it. I'd say it's definitely way more like a normal week than not."

Said quarterback Geno Smith, "I actually like it, especially division opponents. You get a chance to kind of correct some of your mistakes and then try to take advantage of some things you thought went well. Going up against this team, a team that we've seen a bunch, we know what they're doing, they know what we're doing. It's about who's going to execute better and going up against this team and knowing what's at stake, having a week in between after that last game. I think for both teams, man, I know they're going to be fired up, especially at home and I know we're going to be fired up. Everyone knows what's at stake. It's a big game because it's the next game, but also a division game, and so we're fighting to get into the playoffs. They are as well, so it should be a great matchup."

3. How do the Seahawks do against an ascending Arizona pass rush?

The Seahawks did enough offensively to win the previous meeting, especially with the defense playing so well, but overall it wasn't a great day on that side of the ball, with the offense managing just two scoring drives, one touchdown and one field goal, while Coby Bryant's pick-six provided the other touchdown. The Seahawks had one other promising drive end on a red zone interception, but five other possessions ended in punts, and the common denominator on four of those five possessions was that they ended with Geno Smith getting sacked on third down.

Arizona's five sacks were part of a recent trend for a Cardinals defense that has been exceeding outside expectations this season. Through their first eight games, the Cardinals had 14 sacks, or less that two per game, but over their past four games, the Cardinals have 19, including five in each of their past two contests.

If the Seahawks are going to put together a more consistent offensive performance, they'll need to find ways to keep that pass rush from getting to Smith.

"They've got great blitz packages," Smith said. "I believe their (defensive) coordinator and their head coach work together on that and I think they do a great job at having multiple ways to give you similar looks and you see on film where they get a lot of free rushers and that's pretty hard to do. Teams are scheming up packages and stuff, but they do a great job. They understand their blitz patterns, they understand the guys who are dropping in zones, and where to get to. You can tell they rep it a bunch, they let their "Mike" linebacker kind of quarterback the entire thing and if they see you get into a check, they'll check out and if they feel like you don't have an answer, they'll bring the blitz. So it's always that game of cat and mouse I enjoy. That's one of the things I enjoy the most about playing quarterback and we'll see what they have for us. It's going to be a different package when we get to the game, but we've just got to be prepared to adjust and go out there and execute, make the plays happen."

4. Who returns kickoffs and punts for Seattle?

The Seahawks made a pair of significant changes on special teams this week, waiving both Laviska Shenault Jr. and Dee Williams, who up to that point had been the team's primary kick returners, with Williams also handling punt return duties. Those roster moves came after each player lost a fumble on kick returns, and that means the Seahawks will need to fill both of those roles for this week's game.

So who fills in?

One obvious candidate is receiver Jaelon Darden, who was claimed off waivers Thursday. A 2021 fourth-round pick, Darden has significant return experience, especially punt returns, and he has not fumbled in his four-year career.

There are also some in-house options who bring varying degrees of experience on returns. Kenny McIntosh has already filled in on kick return duty this season when Shenault was sidelined by injury, and he also did some returns in college, while Tre Brown and Dareke Young have gotten looks there in practice, at various times going to back to training camp, as has Zach Charbonnet.

Both of those roles are significant, especially with more kickoffs being returned this year following a change in format on that play, so finding the right solutions will be important for the Seahawks to have a better day on special teams.

5. Is this the week the running game breaks out?

The Seahawks have been held under 100 rushing yards in three straight games and four of their last five games. The lack of a consistent run game has been a factor in Seattle's offensive inconsistency, and getting that going on Sunday would bode well not just for the Seahawks chances on Sunday, but for the rest of the season as well.

And though last week's total of 84 rushing yards wasn't what the Seahawks were looking for, they did improve as the game went along, there were signs of progress, particularly in the second half when the run game contributed to a couple of long drives, including the game-winning touchdown drive that ended with an 8-yard touchdown run by Zach Charbonnet.

"I thought last week was probably our best week as far as working the football inside the B gaps and getting physical on some of those double teams," offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb said. "There were certainly some times in the Jets game where I felt like we were dominating the line of scrimmage and moving those double teams, and they did a great job with it. I thought at the right moments on a couple of those long drives, that was really what helped us sustain. I thought last week was one of our biggest steps in the run game, and I thought we did a great job."