🚌 Sam Darnold's driving school 🚌

Bill Parcells famously said he wanted his quarterback to be a bus driver.

Nothing flashy.

Both hands on the wheel.

You don’t need to worry about how sharp you’re cornering, how fast you’re accelerating, just keep the thing out of the ditch.

While I won’t go so far as to say that is the approach Seattle has adopted over the course of this season, the Seahawks offense has clearly moved in that direction over the past two months.

So as tempting as it may be to characterize Saturday’s divisional playoff game as a chance for Sam Darnold to rewrite his big-game reputation, if that happens against the 49ers, it means something will have gone wrong for the Seahawks.

They want to win this game in much the same way they won the Week 18 meeting between the two teams, which is with a suffocating defense.

They want to run the ball effectively.

They would prefer that kicker Jason Myers make all his field-goal attempts this time around, but there will be no complaints or concerns spawned by another 13-3 victory.

The Seahawks don’t want to put everything on Darnold’s shoulders. That was true even before he suffered an oblique injury that caused him to leave Thursday’s practice, triggering a collective gasp around Seattle. It sounds fairly certain Darnold will play. It remains to be seen how limited he is, but even if he was 100 percent, this offense has changed fairly dramatically over the course of the season.

Some of that is a reflection of an improved ground game.

Some of that is a reflection of risk management. The Seahawks watched Darnold get intercepted four times in that Nov. 16 meeting with the Rams and decided that perhaps they should reel things in just a bit.

They have done just that, and the fact that they won seven in a row while doing so is a validation of the approach. Seattle has been able to win without asking the quarterback to stick his neck out.

That’s going to get more difficult in the playoffs. Teams are better, the strategies more desperate.

If the Seahawks do make a run, there will come a time the Seahawks have to ask Darnold to drive the team a long way in a short amount of time to extend the season.

When that happens, it will be a referendum on Darnold. The Seahawks, however, would prefer to avoid this for as long as possible.

In the time that I spent covering the Seattle Seahawks first as a newspaper reporter and later as a radio host, I noticed a very specific trend.

On those occasions that the Seattle Seahawks lost in the divisional round of the playoffs, there was one specific refrain that all the players would hit in the days following the defeat.

They’d emphasize the need to win more games in the regular season so this game could be at home.

It happened in 2006 when the Seahawks lost in overtime to the Chicago Bears.

It happened the following season when the Seahawks jumped out to a 14-0 lead in Green Bay only to give up 42 consecutive points once the Wisconsin snow started falling. That year, players even pointed to the weather in Seattle as a reason to avoid going on the road.

It happened again in 2019 when the Seahawks went back to Green Bay.

This year: The Seahawks have the set-up they want. That doesn’t guarantee they’ll advance, but it does mean they have the absolute best chance to do so.

This is the 14th time the Seahawks have reached the divisional round of the playoffs. The history here demonstrates the importance of home field.

Seattle is 3-1 when hosting a divisional round game. The Seahawks are 1-8 when those games are played on the road with the only victory coming in 1983 when Seattle upset Miami and its rookie quarterback, Dan Marino.

The only time the Seahawks have lost at home in the divisional round of the playoffs was 1988 when Seattle was beaten 21-13 by Cincinnati in a game played in the Kingdome.

Seattle’s divisional playoff history: