Fix what’s broken: Seahawks officially hire Ravens defensive whiz Mike Macdonald as coach
If you can beat ‘em, get the guy who just did.
And: Fix what’s most broken.
That’s what the Seahawks just did with Mike Macdonald.
Seattle has an agreement with the Baltimore Ravens coordinator — whose top-ranked defense dominated the San Francisco 49ers last month — on a six-year contract to be the Seahawks’ ninth coach in franchise history, The News Tribune has learned.
Team employees enthusiastically greeted Macdonald, 36, and his wife Stephanie as they arrived for the first time at the Seahawks’ Virginia Mason Athletic Center Wednesday.
The team made the hiring official late Wednesday afternoon.
“What an honor,” Macdonald told those gathered to welcome him at team headquarters, via the team’s website.
“The reputation of this place — what drew us here was the people. That’s why we’re here, to bring a championship back to Seattle and the 12s.”
A press conference introducing Macdonald at Seahawks headquarters in Renton is scheduled for Thursday at 11 a.m.
“We’re going to have a lot of fun, we’re going to work our tails off, and it’s going to be an incredible ride,” Macdonald said inside the front doors of the VMAC.
“We’re going to be here for a long time, and we’re going to win a lot of football games.”
Three weeks ago team chair Jody Allen chose general manager John Schneider’s vision of new and different for the Seahawks over that of coach Pete Carroll.
This is how new and different this hire is: Seattle goes from having the NFL’s oldest coach to the league’s youngest. At 36, Macdonald becomes a first-time head coach at exactly half Carroll’s age.
The Seahawks fired Carroll Jan. 10 after his 14 years leading the franchise. That was after a 2023 season in which Seattle missed the playoffs for just the third time in 12 years while fielding one of the NFL’s worst defenses.
Macdonald becomes the second coach in Seahawks history who comes to Seattle with no head-coaching experience at any level. The other: Jack Patera. Seattle made the former Minnesota Vikings line coach the coach of the expansion Seahawks from their inaugural season of 1976 through ‘82.
This past season, Macdonald’s Ravens became the first team in NFL history to have a defense best in the NFL in sacks (60), turnovers produced (31) and points allowed per game (16.1).
Kyle Hamilton is one of many Ravens who flourished in Baltmore once Macdonald became the team’s defensive coordinator two years ago. The safety became an All-Pro and Pro Bowl selection this season for the first time under Macdonald.
“He’s super-cerebral,” Hamilton told NFL Network Wednesday from the Pro Bowl in Orlando, Florida, just before the Seahawks decided to hire Macdonald. “Really smart guy. Probably the smartest guy in the building—don’t tell him I said that.
“But he’s going to get everybody in the right spots, use everybody’s best abilities. And, really, just conforms to what we do best as a defense and as a team. Great motivator. Lets the guys lead the room. Just a bunch of great qualities for him.
“Whatever is coming in his future, he deserves it.”
Macdonald continues the trend of Seattle hiring head coaches with defensive backgrounds that dates to 2009. That was when the Seahawks hired Jim Mora to succeed Mike Holmgren. Mora lasted one miserable season before then-Seahawks owner Paul Allen, the current team chair’s brother, hired Carroll in January 2010.
Carroll’s defense changed schemes before the 2022 season from his bedrock 4-3 system to a hybrid scheme. Seattle has had more 3-4 looks the last two seasons, with outside linebackers not ends as the primary pass rushers and only two downfield linebackers in the middle.
It has failed. The defense remains the worst part of the team.
The Seahawks have been at the bottom of the league in total defense the last two seasons. They went from 30th in the NFL in rushing defense to 31st this past season. That was despite the team adding tens of millions of dollars in new contracts plus the fifth-overall pick in last year’s draft on defense.
Seahawks general manager John Schneider flew by a private plan owned by the estate of late team owner Paul Allen to Baltimore Tuesday to interview Macdonald for the first time. Schneider had waited three weeks per the NFL interview rules for candidates from teams still in the league’s playoffs to talk to Macdonald.
When Baltimore lost to Kansas City Sunday in the AFC championship game, Schneider pounced to interview Macdonald twice in two days, on opposite coasts.
The second time came Wednesday morning at Seahawks headquarters in Renton. That was the final piece the team and Macdonald needed to agree to a deal. The Seahawks weren’t going to hire a coach and give him a contract worth millions per year through 2029 without him seeing the facility and meeting its staff first.
“We are super-excited to be here,” Macdonald told the team’s website. “Just getting to know John and the rest of the folks, the reputation of this place, what drew us here were the people.”
Mike Macdonald’s roots
Carroll had been coaching for more than 50 years.
Macdonald has been coaching for 15.
He stopped playing football at the end of high school, at Centennial High School outside Atlanta. He began his coaching career in 2008 while as a student at the University of Georgia. Macdonald got a job coaching at Cedar Shoals High School in Athens, close to where he was going to college.
Georgia assistant coaches began hearing about this college kid who was impressively motivating teenagers at the high school across town. In 2010, Georgia coach Mark Richt hired Macdonald to be a graduate assistant on the Bulldogs’ staff.
He was a low-level, quality-control assistant for two years at Georgia. He quickly gained starting players’ trust with his detailed breakdowns of film and opposing offenses.
In 2014, Ravens coach John Harbaugh hired Macdonald from Georgia to be an intern on Baltimore’s NFL coaching staff.
Harbaugh was asked recently what he saw in Macdonald when he hired the 20-something as an intern 10 years ago.
“He was very eager and very smart and very motivated and hardworking and all those kinds of things, and you could just tell,” Harbaugh told Baltimore-area reporters. “He had all those kinds of traits. I think he’s been raised the right way. His parents are incredible people. He just got to it and worked hard at it and kind of came up through the system.
“With this particular defensive system, he’s probably been blessed with the opportunity to grow with the same system. And then the evolution of the system over the course of the last, what, nine, 10 years, he’s been right in the middle of all that.”
Macdonald then became Harbaugh’s defensive backs coach (2017) and linebackers coach (2018-20). He got his first chance to run a defense from his boss’ brother. Jim Harbaugh hired Macdonald to be his defensive coordinator at the University of Michigan before the 2021 season.
Michigan went from 106th nationally in college football defensive efficiency to 13th in the season Macdonald led the Wolverine’s defense. He used disguised coverages, mixed blitzes and just plain confusion for offenses as Michigan won the Big Ten Conference for the first time in 16 years.
John Harbaugh brought Macdonald back as the Ravens’ new defensive coordinator, replacing Don “Wink” Martindale before the 2022 season.
This season, in addition to leading the NFL in the most important metrics for defense, Macdonald’s Ravens completely annihilated Geno Smith and the Seahawks’ offense. Baltimore ran away with a 37-3 win over Seattle in November, the Seahawks’ fewest points scored this season.
Baltimore (13-4) had the league’s best regular-season record in 2023.
The Seahawks had a second consecutive season of 9-8 mediocrity. They still haven’t been where the Ravens and Macdonald just were, past the divisional round of the postseason, since Seattle’s last Super Bowl season of 2014.
Mike Macdonald’s schemes
His Ravens schemes work, often because Macdonald confuses opposing quarterbacks and offensive play callers.
This month in the AFC divisional playoff game against Houston, Macdonald had the Ravens’ secondary changing from alignments of two safeties deep at the snap into what during plays became single-high safety coverage, with the other safety rotating up toward the line of scrimmage. Texans offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik, who had been on the Seahawks’ list of eight coaches they interviewed this month, and Texans rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud had big success this season against single-high coverage. But against Baltimore they often saw two-deep looks and thus called plays for them.
Then during the snaps, Baltimore often played the single-high sets Houston wanted to see but wasn’t seeing when the Texans chose their plays.
Doug Farrar, the Seattle-based NFL editor for the USA Today Sports Media Group, detailed Macdonald’s chess-match, check-mate win over the Texans 34-10 with video explanation online.
Farrar called Macdonald’s work “a master class.”
Macdonald earned a master’s degree from the University of Georgia while he coached there. He has a Master of Arts from UGA in sport management and policy. He earned a 4.0 grade-point average in graduate school from 2010-13.
How do we know that?
He’s got to be the only NFL head coach to still have a LinkedIn page online.
First task
Macdonald’s first task will be to hire his equivalent on the other side of the ball: A new Seahawks offensive coordinator.
Schneider has said the hiring of the coaching staff, of which he now has final say with Carroll gone, is next in importance to hiring the new head coach.
With a young, offensive play caller as the new head man, the Seahawks perhaps are seeking an older, established offensive coordinator.
Eric Bieniemy, 54, left being Kansas City’s offensive coordinator before last season to take the same job with Washington. The Commanders have since fired head coach Ron Rivera. Bieniemy’s future is in flux while Washington considers who it will hire as its next head man.
Bieniemy reportedly met two weeks ago with Commanders decision-makers about the head-coaching vacancy in Washington.
“Our key here is to let people know that they have people that are going to help them be the best head coach and have the best staff that they could possibly have,” Schneider said this month,” and they’re going to know that we can support them whether they have been a head coach, or they haven’t been a head coach
“Staff development and procurement, I think that’s extremely important, regardless of (whether the new head coach is) an offensive guy, defensive guy, or special-teams guy.”
This story was originally published January 31, 2024 at 2:03 PM with the headline "Fix what’s broken: Seahawks officially hire Ravens defensive whiz Mike Macdonald as coach."
