What consistutes 'success' for Mike Macdonald's start with Seahawks?

Super Bowl thoughts and Mike Macdonald expectations: Seaside Joe 1804

The paradox of the Super Bowl, for me, is that I’m rarely excited for their biggest game of the season when the Seahawks aren’t in it. I can’t tell the NFL that their strategy is “wrong” because obviously they’re getting the ratings they want, but the two-week break between the conference championships and the Super Bowl is a major anticipation-killer.

I would argue that a Week 14 afternoon game between the Bills and Chiefs in December is actually much more intriguing than Sunday’s play-for-it-all between Kansas City and the 49ers. At this point, all most fans probably want is for the game to be over with and the next phase of the offseason to begin; I find a coaching search to be more interesting than yesterday’s discussion about Niners-Chiefs, or today’s discussion about Niners-Chiefs, or tomorrow’s discussion about Niners-Chiefs.

It’s too much rehashing of the same old topics. We out-talked the talking points of Niners-Chiefs by last Monday after the conference championships.

Of course, it does not help at all that the two teams are the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs. We’ve seen these teams, and even this game, before.

I’m always intrigued by the prospect of witnessing a dynasty in real time and give respect to Patrick Mahomes and company where respect is due. I would still be much more excited if this was Josh Allen against literally any team in the NFC besides the 49ers.

But this is the hand we were dealt, so we have to deal with it.

49ers-Chiefs score prediction

Chiefs 24, 49ers 23 (OT)

Chris Jones blocks PAT, wins Super Bowl MVP to solidify that he will make more than Nick Bosa in free agency.

Add your predictions here if you are in the Regular Joes club:

Seahawks-49ers future

I was pondering this on Thursday: What would consistute a “successful” three-year run for Mike Macdonald’s first three seasons with the Seahawks? As fans, we tend to put so much pressure on being the best that it is easy to forget that you can be the best version of yourself possible and still not reach the Super Bowl.

Only one team will win the Super Bowl, but that doesn’t mean that there was only one team that was successful.

On The GM Shuffle podcast on Thursday, former NFL GM Michael Lombardi noted that plenty of legendary head coaches never won the Super Bowl including Pete Carroll’s mentor Bud Grant (he reached it three times from 1973-1976 but lost each time) and former Bills head coach Marv Levy, who went four years in a row.

As much as it pains me to admit it, Kyle Shanahan reaching two Super Bowls with the 49ers is in itself a rare achievement.

Here’s another way to say it: Are there only three “successful” AFC quarterbacks of the last 24 seasons?

Because since 2001, Tom Brady won the AFC nine times (that’s 37.5% of the last 24 years), Patrick Mahomes has won it four times (that’s 16.6%), and Peyton Manning won the conference four times (another 16.6%). So 17 of the last 24 (70.8%) AFC titles have been won by three people, and three of the remaining seven went to Ben Roethlisberger. That’s 20 of 24 to four quarterbacks.

Who does that leave? Rich Gannon in 2002, Joe Flacco in 2012, and Joe Burrow in 2021.

Who don’t you see: Philip Rivers, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Drew Bledsoe, Carson Palmer, Andrew Luck, Justin Herbert, or Deshaun Watson.

I’m sure at least one of those quarterbacks who are still active will get there eventually but what Rivers proved is that you never really know. I was watching Dan Marino’s Super Bowl against Joe Montana the other day and could you have imagined then that it would be his first, last, and only appearance?

To get back to the original question, what would constitute “success” for Macdonald in the next few years? Well, in theory the 49ers and Rams could continue to be really good teams and make reaching the Super Bowl more difficult out of the NFC West than if the Seahawks played in the NFC South or even the East and the North. San Francisco has been to the NFC Championship game in four of the last five years and while I’m happy to make arguments signaling their demise, the truth is that nobody knows and sometimes teams can dominate conferences for longer than five years.

83.3% of the last 24 AFC titles went to four quarterbacks. Not long before then, John Elway led the Broncos to five Super Bowl appearances in 13 years. Around then, the 49ers won five Super Bowls in 14 years.

Sure, the NFL has parity…until you’re like, “Does it?”

What if the Seahawks make the playoffs in each of the next three seasons but lose to the 49ers each time? I know, we don’t even want to imagine that as a possibility, get it out of our brains, but is that “better” than Pete Carroll’s final seven seasons as head coach of the Seahawks?

I would argue that it probably is because my issue recently wasn’t that the Seahawks failed to win or reach the Super Bowl. My issue has been that Seattle isn’t competitive in the playoffs and lately they don’t even lose to the best teams:

2017-missed

2018-lost to Cowboys, who lost the next week

2019-beat Josh McCown, then lost to Packers, who lost the next week

2020-lost to Rams, who lost the next week

2021-missed

2022-lost to 49ers, who lost to Eagles in NFC Championship

2023-missed

We won’t know what could have come of the 2022 49ers if not for Brock Purdy’s NFC Championship injury, but San Francisco lost that game 31-7.

If somehow the Seahawks lost to the 49ers and/or Rams in each of the next three playoffs, there will be people saying that Macdonald’s team “isn’t good enough” for not beating their division rivals but if those turn out to be the best teams in the NFC then I could accept that Seattle is at least showing improvement and probably on the right path.

Marty Schottenheimer won 200 games as an NFL head coach, including 14-2 in his final career season, but the Chargers fired him because he lost a playoff game 24-21 to the greatest head coach/QB dynasty in league history because Marlon McCree was careless with the football. The Chargers convinced themselves they were better than that…they weren’t better than that. They’ve never been better than that and Jim Harbaugh is their fifth head coach since then.

So, I don’t want to put it out there that Macdonald’s Seahawks could lose in the playoffs but now is as good of a time of year as any to be reminded that there are worse things than losing in the playoffs. If Macdonald turns Seattle back into a competitive team worth watching that fans start to believe in when the playoffs arrive, that would be a good enough start for me.

Share your takes on that with me in the comments:

The Seaside Joe Newsletter Promotional Section

This is the last segment of the newsletter so you can stop reading here if you just came for the Super Bowl and the Seahawks.

I was perusing Substack’s top-50 paid newsletter list again on Thursday (we’re 46th) and I will say again that the average output by other people who do what I do is about one newsletter per week. Seaside Joe posts an average of more than 40 newsletters per month!

Since inception, Seaside Joe has set a subscriber rate of $5 per month, which is the cheapest of any in the top-50, as 80% of the newsletters charge more than that. A popular NFL newsletter like Matt Miller’s The Draft Scout posted 12 times in January, all behind a paywall, and charges $10 per month. And it’s draft season.

That’s asking subscribers to pay about $1 for an article and they’re not in-depth, it’s anything you could find for free at The Ringer or a similar website.

$5 for 40 articles would be 0.12 cents per post. But I don’t want to put the majority of my work behind a paywall because most of it should be there for any Seahawks fan to enjoy, to learn more about the team, to share with other fans who might be interested in a place and a community like this one, and when bonus or premium articles are created it is only an attempt to get Seaside Joe to a place where it truly is self-sustaining, successful, and proving that actually yes you can do this job without ads and sponsorships.

You can be a success—actually MORE of a success—because of fans.

The average rate of paid subscriptions at Substack is 3-5%. The rate of paid subscribers at Seaside Joe is 22%…I’ve never seen that number replicated or close to it anywhere else in the industry or on this platform. That’s because of fans. Seahawks fans, to be precise.

Why such a high number? I attribute it to the consistency you are guaranteed with at least one post every day, the commitment to covering the Seattle Seahawks and never straying from that because I know it is what you signed up for, and the fact that so much of Seaside Joe is free.

Yeah, you can read free articles about the Seahawks here everyday and I’m grateful that so many fans want to share the team with me, but also if you want to support with $5 per month, $55 per year, or $110 as a Super Joes member, I still think that’s an incredible bargain for about 500 Seahawks articles every single year. Just click that link or enter your email address below to get started:

Speaking of Super Joes, one of the benefits included is the Q&A Mailbag segment sent exclusively to people at that level, which I sent out this morning. Answers to those questions will be sent to everyone for free, but if you want to ask the questions then just join the Super Joes club.