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…
And subscribe/share with other Seahawks fans if you have the opportunity.
My guess is that JS couldn’t find a McVey/Shanahan type of offensive coach so zagged to a defensive coach who has shown the ability to beat their systems. I certainly hope he chose wisely. As a huge fan of great defenses I like this hire a lot!
This phase of fan angst is officially over!
Re the OC / DC debate:
Six years ago, I was diagnosed with and successfully (so far, so good) treated for prostate cancer. Because of my age and the nature of the diagnosis, there was no clear direction for treatment. All I knew was that I had a choice between a radiation and a radical prostectomy and that my chances of surviving were the same either way. There were pluses and minuses to both, and the choice was up to me.
Well, naturally I did a lot of reading and consulting with docs. Here’s what’s relevant to the Seahawks coaching choice: The author of a strongly pro-surgery book nonetheless stated plainly that as much he recommended an RP, you were always better off with a good radiation oncologist than a bad surgeon.
That’s why from the beginning I’ve viewed offense / defense as a tiebreaker that takes a back seat to traits like leadership, philosophy, organizational skills, communication skills, ability to build a staff, and the relationship with the GM. It doesn’t matter how good a coordinator an assistant coach is if he’s not head coach material.
This isn’t to say that Mike Kafka isn’t a future head coach or that John Schneider wouldn’t have liked to hire an offensive coach. It is to say that the man is more important than the side of the ball he comes from. If Mike MacDonald is the man, no one will care about anything else.