Macdonald keeps his eyes on the prize after the Seattle Seahawks demolish the San Francisco 49ers

Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald was refusing to get carried away by his team’s annihilation of the San Francisco 49ers, and insisted “there’s still a mission at hand”.

The Seahawks were too strong in every facet of the game as they brushed aside the challenge of the injury-ravaged Niners 41-6 to advance to the NFC Championship game against either the Chicago Bears or the Los Angeles Rams.

The tone was set by Rashid Shaheed returning the opening kick-off for a touchdown and San Francisco had no answer on a punishing night for the road team.

“It was a heck of a win,” Macdonald said. “In the locker room, we’re really excited, we’re very proud of the effort, and the guys understand that there’s still a mission at hand. We’ve got another week coming up here that we need to take care of business every day, and that’s the focus. Proud of the group. We’ll celebrate today, guys will be off tomorrow and be back on Monday.”

Darnold skirts big hits to manage Seahawks’ offense

The Bears and the Rams must have been watching through their fingers as the Seahawks ran amok in front of a excitable Lumen Field crowd.

Much of the build-up centred around quarterback Sam Darnold’s oblique injury but it didn’t seem to impair him at all. He finished 12-of-17 for 124 yards and one touchdown in an efficient performance as Seattle built their offense around their run game.

Darnold said: “Really good team win from the first snap. The kickoff, [Shaheed] taking it to the house, that was special. To hear that stadium, too, rocking the way it was tonight, unbelievable, man. The 12s came out. It was fun. Our defense doing their thing. And as an offense, too, the ball control, I feel like that was huge for us all game and finishing in the red zone.

“I felt good, and if I did get hurt, I feel like you all would have probably known about it,. So no, I felt really good the entire game. And any hits I did take I didn’t feel it on that side.”

Macdonald was impressed with Darnold’s game management.

“Tremendous,” Macdonald said of his quarterback’s performance. “There was a couple of plays early that I think [it took him] to get in the swing of things. But I say ‘manage’ the game as a very high-powered compliment. Just throwing it on time, taking care of the ball, making the plays when we need to. I think there’s going to be some explosives out there that maybe we could get to. But shoot, I thought there’s a lot of operation stuff that he did that really helped us as well.”

They got us pretty good – Shanahan

It was a disappointing end to what has been a grind of a season for the Niners.

Coach Kyle Shanahan has received plenty of plaudits for the way he has managed to squeeze the maximum from a shorthanded roster but admitted tonight was a step too far.

He said: “No one played perfect. No one played great today. No one coached great today. They got us pretty good.

“Tonight is a little hard. I tried to articulate that to the guys. We didn’t get caught up so much tonight. Like I said, I’m very proud of a lot of guys in there. We’re extremely disappointed right now, but it doesn’t take away for how I feel about them right now.

“A lot of guys got to play this year that haven’t played in the past, and that should help us for the future. But we’ll come in Monday and we’ll deal with all this stuff, put this game to bed and deal with all the players, and then we’ll very quickly start on our offseason plan, how to build this team the best way possible to give us a shot next year.”