According to one member of the surging Seahawks, Saturday's game against the NFC West champion 49ers is a foregone conclusion.
"They come to our place Christmas Eve, and we're going to beat the hell out of 'em," Scot McCloughan told Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports, in a piece released Friday.
McCloughan, a senior personnel executive with Seattle, certainly knows San Francisco's roster better than most. He spent five years with the team from 2005 to 2010 -- the last two as the 49ers general manager -- before he was abruptly fired by the team in March of 2010.
While the Seahawks (7-7) have won five of six and cling to a fingernail's chance of making the playoffs, McCloughan's heart, to a degree, is still invested in the team into which he put half a decade's work.
McCloughan told Silver of a Sunday afternoon earlier this month when he sat in an Indianapolis sports bar, on a scouting trip, and witnessed 49ers running back Frank Gore break the team's all-time rushing record.
"I got up and walked away," he said. "Just to know that he did it, it was so cool. And that's all I wanted to see. The guy deserved it. He blew out both knees and both shoulders, and the son of a gun still goes to work. He represents everything I tried to build."
McCloughan said he won't attend Saturday's game, hoping to avoid becoming a distraction for his current -- and former -- team, but it's clear he's deeply invested in how this one plays out.
