Seahawks’ likely game time with Mariners’ late-afternoon playoff game Sunday
Mike Macdonald is willing to do just about anything for the Mariners.
Move his Seahawks’ game time? Sure, Seattle’s football coach says.
Whatever, for the hometown baseball team’s playoff games.
How about growing a playoff moustache for the M’s?
Well...
“I don’t know if you’ve seen my facial hair,” the youthful, 37-year-old Macdonald said, “but it’s not good.
“Patchy.”
The Seahawks’ coach has been briefed on the possibility of his 3-1 team’s NFL game Sunday at Lumen Field against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (3-1) moving from its scheduled 1:05 p.m. kickoff time.
The Mariners will be playing across the street at T-Mobile Park Sunday in the second game of their Major League Baseball American League Division Series. MLB announced Wednesday the Mariners playoff Game 2 will start at 5:03 p.m. Sunday.
The Seahawks could stay at 1:05 p.m. Or they could move up their kickoff Sunday by perhaps an hour, to around noon.
By scheduling arrangements between the two teams and their leagues, any Mariners home playoff game has priority in scheduling over a Seahawks regular-season game.
“From what I understand, it’s not that big of a move,” Macdonald said at the start of this week. “So we would just adjust our morning schedule accordingly. Really, no big deal.
“It’s actually kind of great that we’re going to be forced to move. That’s awesome for our city, and it’s going to be a really exciting Sunday.”
The teams staggering game times mitigates some of the traffic, logistics and security issues of having more than 115,000 fans in the SoDo neighborhood of Seattle at the same time for the two sold-out games next door to each other Sunday. The Mariners’ capacity is about 47,000 and the Seahawks’ is 68,000.
This is the second consecutive baseball postseason a West Coast team gets the later Sunday game for the second game of a division series.
Last season when MLB had two games in one league on a Sunday for game twos of the division series, the start times were 1:08 p.m. and 5:03 p.m. Philadelphia hosted the New York Mets in the early game. The Los Angeles Dodgers hosted San Diego in the later one.
Like the Mariners are this baseball postseason, the Dodgers were the only West Coast team in the National and American Leagues who hosted games one and two of the 2024 division series.
An earlier-than-scheduled Seahawks game time of perhaps noon would have Seahawks fans leaving Lumen Field at game’s end about 90 minutes before the Mariners’ first pitch.
Mariners Game 1 start time TBD
As for the start time for the Mariners’ first game of the division series Saturday at T-Mobile Park, the television-ratings kings the Boston Red Sox or the New York Yankees determine that.
The Red Sox or Yankees, meeting in a wild-card series that began Tuesday, will be playing the other AL Division Series Game 2 Sunday, at Toronto. MLB announced Wednesday the Mariners’ Game 1 will be 1:08 p.m. Saturday if Boston advances and 5:38 p.m. if New York advances.
Macdonald says he and his Seahawks are cool with “whatever.”
Asked when his team expects to learn its kickoff time for Sunday, the coach said: “It’s somewhere later on in the week, I think.
“But it’s kind of, whatever. Let us know when we’re playing the game.”
The Seahawks have had recent experience preparing for this kind of switch. When the Mariners made the 2022 American League playoffs for the first time in 21 years, they had Game 4 of the ALDS scheduled for Sunday in Seattle. The Seahawks had a home game that day they were prepared to move the start time of.
But then the Houston Astros swept the M’s in three games. A Game 4 never happened. The Seahawks played just after 1 p.m., as scheduled.
This story was originally published October 1, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
