Despite the fact that the Seahawks have had more success than the Bears this season, there were plenty of reasons why Thursday's game could have proven difficult for Seattle beyond the usual cliches about any given Sunday, or in this case, Thursday.

For starters, the Seahawks had just lost two in a row, and were having to bounce back on a short week that included a long flight east on Christmas. And the Seahawks also had to process the fact that, thanks to last weekend's loss to the Vikings, combined with another Rams win, they were no longer in control of their playoff destiny. Yes, the Seahawks can still win the NFC West, but they'll need some help to do so, meaning they went into Thursday night's game not knowing if it had any playoff significance or not.

Yet for all the Seahawks had working against them, they were still able to gut out a 6-3 win thanks to a dominant performance from the defense, at least keeping them in the mix heading into the weekend, uncertain if they'll get the help they need stay in contention.

"The guys are put in a tough spot," Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said Monday. "You're not guaranteed—you're not holding your own destiny, so what are you going to go play for? How are you going to go on a short week, go across the country, go play the right way, battle adversity throughout the game, stick together, and fight through it? How are you going to do all of that when playoff implications aren't necessarily on the line? That tells me our guys are connected, they're tough, and they're playing for one another. I think that's pretty awesome."

The significance of Thursday's win, from a playoff perspective, remains to be seen, but it did secure a winning season for the Seahawks in their first year under Mike Macdonald, while allowing Macdonald to tie Mike Holmgren and Chuck Knox for the most wins by a head coach in his first season with the Seahawks.

"Right now, it's told me we've won enough to have the chance to win one more to go for the chance to go win in the playoffs," Macdonald said. "That's really as simple as it is. We wish we would have won more. We want to win every time we step on the field. But, to be sitting here with a week left and still have life, we've done some things, I felt like we've grown. Fallen short several times, but we've gotten up and dusted ourselves off and kept moving forward."

With their playoff fate now in the hands of other teams, it will be really easy to look back at every loss this season and wonder "what if?" about every loss should the Seahawks miss the postseason, though of course there's nothing the Seahawks can do about that now.

"If you're not in charge of your own destiny, you're always going to think of moments that you felt like you could have taken advantage of better to put yourself in a better position," Macdonald said. "But that's always going to be the case, otherwise, we'd be sitting here at 16-0 just thinking that we're the best thing since sliced bread. So, that's kind of where we're at, and it's not an ideal situation. But, I do feel that we probably wouldn't have won some games as well or put ourselves in this situation if we didn't learn, evolve, grow, stick together, and stick to the process of how we want to be as a team to be able to get through the ebbs and flows of the season. So yeah, absolutely, there are times throughout the year where we felt like we could have taken advantage of to put ourselves in a better position going into the last week.

"Any loss, you're going to think what you could have done throughout the game. So, name a loss and I can tell you what we could have done better and how we could have taken advantage of it. Anytime we take the field, we're going to expect to win the game, and we're going to try to do those things necessary to win. When we don't, that's when you have to learn from it. All of the losses you're really thinking, shoot, those sting. That's the fact of the reality."