SAN JOSE, Calif. — Once the clock struck 12 on Thursday, the most arduous part of the week might have concluded for the Seahawks at the Super Bowl.

It was then, right at high noon, that the last media obligation wrapped up for Seahawks coaches and players.

From that point until 3:38 p.m. Sunday, they were freed to put their heads down and think about nothing but the game against the New England Patriots.

Not that anyone was really complaining after a fourth consecutive day for most of them spending an hour or so fielding questions from not only the usual local beat writers and national NFL reporters but media from all over the world.

In the latest sign that things this week have been a bit different from preparing for, say, the Saints in Week 3, a reporter from Germany on Thursday brought out a sketching tool and asked many to try to draw the Seahawk logo.

Receiver Cooper Kupp happily obliged, only to jokingly complain when he found out that the backdrop behind him had no Seahawk logo for him to look at as he drew, unlike other players.

“Oh, they had pictures to go off?” Kupp said with mock incredulity. “Were they cheating?”

As Kupp talked, he did so wearing an “I (heart) Sam Darnold” T-shirt.

Asked why he was wearing the shirt, Kupp said he was just trying to support his quarterback.

“Just seemed like a good day to whip it out,” he said before lapsing into some sarcasm. “It’s been a little bit of a stir, though. Had to answer a lot of questions about it.”

The exchange was typical of a media session in which the Seahawks tried to put one of their pet slogans — loose and focused — into action.

That’s one of a handful of Mike Macdonald sayings that have caught on this season, signifying that there is a time for fun and games and the real games.

“Loose and focused I think is the defining term of our team,” safety Julian Love said. “If you’re around our team at all you know that we just mess around constantly with each other. We are always roasting each other, always jabbing at each other.

“But it’s all love. It never crossed any line this entire year. It has no fatigue, it’s constant, every single day. But when the whistle blows, the horn goes off, it’s business and guys expect to be perfect on the field.”

As if on cue, at a podium to Love’s left, linebacker Ernest Jones IV and rush end Derick Hall began to demonstrate shadow boxing, a sort-of version of the real thing that the team began to play this season in the locker room during dead time.

Love broke from his answer to break into play-by-play describing the action, citing it as an example of loose and focused.

It’s something that Love indicates might not have happened a year ago.

“(Former coach) Pete Carroll came with a lot of culture and a lot of players loved that culture and were used to that culture for years,” Love said. “So last year there were a lot of compromises made in terms of the style that (Macdonald) wanted to have versus the style that had been in the building for a decade plus.”

Love recalled a meeting at the beginning of the season where Macdonald said that this year “we’re going to do it our way, the Seahawk way. … This year you see a total jump in the culture shift of how he wants to do things.”

Earlier, Macdonald talked of the “loose and focused” mindset and said his hope was that nothing had changed this week.

“We do what we do,” Macdonald said.

He noted that as the team does every third Thursday of the season, the team held what are termed “walk and talks” earlier in the day. That’s the term for brief periods where players pair up and take a walk to get to know each other better — usually, players from different position groups who may not as often cross paths.

Macdonald said he ended a team meeting Thursday asking: “Ten years from now when we have a team reunion, what are you guys going to remember about this team?”

The answers revealed that it’s as much the off-field moments as the on-field that will stick out — “The laughs and the funny stories,’’ Macdonald said.

How much culture matters is always datable — all winning teams tend to have good cultures and losing teams tend to be searching for it.

Quarterback Sam Darnold was among those Thursday to say he thinks it’s been a big factor in the success of this year’s team.

In an answer to a question of how the week has gone, he said what has stuck out to him most is how the team has taken advantage of having even more time to spend together.

“It kind of feels like training camp again where we’re all here in the hotel, where we are able to hang out and spend a bunch of time together,” Darnold said. “… Busing to the practice facility, spending time in the locker room, busing back, I think just enjoying this moment is such a key for myself, but for a lot of guys in that locker room.”

The week began with another sign of what of players feel illustrates the team’s unique bond — players wearing T-shirts on the plane ride to San Jose reading “We Did Not Care,” the halting statement Macdonald made in a TV interview shortly after the NFC title game win over the Rams in response to a question about the Seahawks entering the season in an underdog role.

Asked who made the shirts, guard Grey Zabel shook his head and laughed.

“I don’t know,” Zabel said. “But I can jokingly say if somebody says something funny or said something catchy at all, it’s going on a T-shirt. I have like three, four, five of them in my locker already.”

Macdonald’s statement, Zabel said, became a running source of the roasting that Love talked about.

“Mike caught crap for that for a few days after he said that,” Zabel said.

Zabel, who in the moment Macdonald said it was on the field sharing some hugs with some teammates and assistant coaches, said he knew instantly what would happen next

“I just turned and looked and kind of started giggling like, ‘That’s going to be a meme,’ ” Zabel said. “You know certain things are going to be a meme — that’s going to be a meme.”

A meme with a meaning.

“You joke and laugh about it, but that’s the mentality and the mindset of ‘We don’t care,’” Zabel said. “Like all this media throughout the week and the distractions and all that, like ‘we don’t care.’ We’ve still got to go play a game on Sunday. It’s good to have a head coach that’s maybe able to bring that stuff to life and maybe have everybody else understand how we feel as a team.”

©2026 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.