BREAKING NEWS: Mike Macdonald expected to be next Seahawks head coach
BREAKING NEWS: Mike Macdonald expected to be next Seahawks head coach
Seahawks hope Mike Macdonald can do for their defense what he did for the Ravens defense: Seaside Joe 1796
The Seattle Seahawks are expected to hire Mike Macdonald as their next head coach, according to multiple reports. The 36-year-old former defensive coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens is the youngest head coach in the NFL, just beating out Jerod Mayo and Sean McVay.
With this information that he’s being hired, it clears up that Macdonald may have been Seattle’s top choice all along:
The Seahawks were primarily focused on defensive coaches and Macdonald has a case of being the best of the available ones.
The Seahawks waited until Macdonald was available for interviews with one report suggesting that Seattle would have waited until after the Super Bowl if necessary.
Macdonald’s Ravens defense was probably the best match—player for player, position for position—for what the Seahawks want to do with their own defense, as I learned from the Seattle Overload podcast.
Mike Macdonald may be the perfect recipe of being like Pete Carroll and completely different from Pete Carroll to be the right person to replace Pete Carroll.
Macdonald spent four years at Georgia in his mid-twenties as an assistant, then took a job with the Ravens under John Harbaugh in 2014 as an intern. He moved his way up to defensive backs in 2017, then linebackers in 2018, prior to becoming the defensive coordinator at Michigan under Jim Harbaugh in 2021. There he worked with current Seahawks defensive lineman Mike Morris, in addition to NFL players like Aidan Hutchinson, David Ojabo, D.J. Turner, and Dax Hill.
Replacing defensive coordinator Wink Martindale in 2022, but keeping the 3-4 defense obviously, Macdonald improved Baltimore’s rankings from 19th in points allowed and 28th in DVOA to third in points and eighth in DVOA. In 2023, the Ravens were first in points and first in DVOA.
The Seahawks rank…28th in DVOA on defense.
This news is great for any Seattle Seahawks on defense who survive what could be a cutthroat offseason for players like Jamal Adams and Quandre Diggs, in addition to free agents like Bobby Wagner and Jordyn Brooks and players who need to step up like Riq Woolen.
The next step is finding out who will be the other coordinators (if Macdonald is the defensive coordinator, then who are his top assistants?) and assistant coaches and is anyone coming with him from Baltimore? Is Mike Kafka an option at offensive coordinator and would he make a good one? At one point I wrote that maybe Macdonald would be the HC and Kafka would be the OC, so I’d rather have that than what I had predicted.
That’s next on Seaside Joe, share your comments on Macdonald below…
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The Head coach can be a genius - BUT if he doesn't get or hire the right/good to great coaches it won't matter . Take a look at the staff under Bill Walsh- Then a really great example was Mike Holmgren in Green Bay! Unfortunately for MH and us and the Seahawks when his D coordinator got sick/etc. he wasn't prepared or had the right guy ready under him at the time/ or maybe it was just not the right number two's and (unfortunately) number three guy's ready to play!
Seems like the Seahawks are getting a lot of positive and very positive grades from the "experts" or just people in general. Always makes me nervous.
However, Ben Baldwin doesn't like the hire so that is a big positive.
One thing for sure ... there is a ton of work to do and highly important decisions to make. Maybe the Jimmy Lake hire is too fresh in my head ... but that OC decision cannot be any bigger.
I think they got a decent chance to get someone good ... But this is a massive risk with going with Mike Mac over a guy like Ben Johnson/Kafka.
So far so good but long ways to go. Fingers crossed.