Ask most Seahawks fans the last time a Seattle team forced at least 40 turnovers in a season and nearly all of them would say the 2013 Legion of Boom. That would be a logical guess. It would also be incorrect. That historic defense did lead the NFL in takeaways, but fell just short of 40, with 39 on the season. The clock would have to turn all the way back to the last century to find the right answer. The 1998 Seahawks are commonly remembered for being the team that brought about the modern instant replay rule after Vinny Testaverde’s helmet was mistaken for the football crossing the end zone and cost the team a playoff spot and Dennis Erickson his job. Mike Macdonald remembers it for a different reason. A linebacker coach named Jim Johnson was allowed to implement an aggressive and innovative zone blitz scheme that unleashed the likes of Chad Brown and Shawn Springs to take the ball away 42 times. The accomplishments of that rarely remembered defense set off a chain of events that would eventually lead to Macdonald taking the helm in the Pacific Northwest.
Paul Allen bought the Seahawks in 1997, inheriting a team that had not had a winning record in six seasons and had not made the playoffs in nearly a decade. Randy Mueller, VP of Football Operations, had started compiling talent like Joey Galloway, Phillip Daniels, Springs, and Walter Jones, and brought in Erickson a couple years prior. Allen was eager to put a winner on the field and opened his wallet immediately to convince Brown to move across the country from the Pittsburgh Steelers to the Seahawks as a free agent.
Erickson was an offensive mind and had produced a top ten scoring offense by 1997, but the defense had finished 23rd, 24th, and 22nd in points allowed in his first three years under defensive coordinator Greg McMackin.
In the middle of the country, 56-year-old Jim Johnson was experiencing his own struggles as the defensive coordinator for the Indianapolis Colts. Johnson had spent 20 years building his resume in college and the pros as a position coach before finally getting his shot in 1996 to call the plays. It did not go well.
The Colts would finish 18th and 26th in points allowed. The team won only 3 games in 1997, resulting in the whole coaching staff being fired. A seed was planted, though, during Johnson’s tenure in Indy.
It was around 1994 or 1995, when I was with the Colts, and we were playing against San Francisco with Steve Young running the West Coast offense, releasing receivers all the time, guys getting by you. The idea was don’t let these people dictate to you. You have to put more pressure [on the quarterback], and every year we tried to figure out how to do that.
– Jim Johnson, describing the origin of his defensive philosophy
Johnson would come to Seattle for just one season, but it would be a year that changed his career and defensive football across the league.
McMackin allowed Johnson to implement a hyper-aggressive blitz scheme that had players coming from every position on the field. Eleven different players would record a sack for the Seahawks that season. Their total of 53 was just one sack behind Michael Strahan and the New York Giants for the league lead. That was up from 15th a year prior.
Their 42 turnovers were good for second in the league as well after finishing 14th before Johnson arrived.
Most impressively, this defense scored points. Lots of points. Their 8 interception returns for touchdowns is the second most in NFL history. Their 10 total defensive touchdowns remains the most in NFL history, per Pro-Football-Reference.
Shawn Springs had two of those pick-six plays and one scoop and score. Linebacker Darrin Smith had two pick sixes. Even big Sam Adams had an interception return for a touchdown.
Seattle would jump to 10th in points allowed that year, but the aggressive defense had drawbacks. It had a tendency to be boom or bust, giving up big plays when the blitzes did not reach the QB. They finished 27th in yards allowed, including a whopping 511 to John Elway and the Broncos in a game that ended their season and Erickson’s career in Seattle.
Mike Holmgren was hired the next year and brought Fritz Shurmur with him to coach the defense. Johnson’s aggressive innovations got him another shot at being a defensive coordinator. This time, in Philadelphia under Holmgren’s protege, Andy Reid. In a cruel twist, Shurmur would pass away before ever having the chance to coach for the Seahawks, but Johnson was already out the door.
Johnson would not waste this new opportunity. From 2000 to 2007, his Philly defenses were tied for the league lead in sacks (342), second in the league in 3rd down defense (34.3%) and red zone defense (43.0%), and fourth in points allowed (17.6).
A young coach would learn under Johnson during his time in Philly. His name was John Harbaugh. Harbaugh had been hired by Ray Rhodes as a special teams coordinator, but was retained when Reid took over. His final season in Philadelphia had him serve as a defensive backs coach under Johnson. That was in 2007.
Harbaugh would be hired as the head coach in Baltimore the following season. That same year, a 21-year-old kid named Mike Macdonald began his coaching career in Athens, Georgia as a linebackers and running backs coach for Cedar Shoals High School.
Six years later, Macdonald would be hired as a Ravens intern. He was given special projects, including studying 3rd down defenses over the years to see which had been most effective. That is where he was introduced to the likes of Johnson and another ultra-aggressive DC who had coached for Harbaugh, Rex Ryan.
The DC at the time in Baltimore was Don “Wink” Martindale, who was also know for aggressive blitz tendencies.
Macdonald seemed to recognize the benefits of these creative pressure packages that sent players from all over the field, while also noticing the drawbacks. Any time a defense sends an extra player, they make themselves more vulnerable and increase the chances of giving up a big play.
Macdonald would chart a different course that would allow him to have the best of both worlds. He would employ the unpredictable and creative pressures, but unlike Johnson, Ryan, and Martindale, he would only send four rushers most of the time. This left more players in coverage and reduced the likelihood of explosive plays for the offense.
In 2018, his impact on the Ravens scheme started to be realized. Harbaugh would call him a “major contributor” in the process of building the Ravens’ defensive scheme. The next year, the Ravens would finish first in yards allowed and second in points allowed.
Jim Harbaugh would eventually hire him away from his brother to become DC for University of Michigan. Harbaugh had been struggling to elevate the program, having never won more than 10 games only winning one bowl game. There were even rumors that his job might be in jeopardy after a COVID-shortened 2-4 season in 2020.
Macdonald’s first season as the DC saw the defense rise from 106 in the country to 13th, per ESPN’s Power Football Index. Michigan would ride defense to 12 wins and finish ranked 2nd in the country in the polls.
John Harbaugh would pull Macdonald back to Baltimore in 2022 after they fired Martindale. Macdonald worked his one-year turnaround magic again, taking a defense that had ranked 19th in points allowed and 25th in yards allowed and turning it into a unit that ranked 3rd and 9th, respectively. They would rise again in 2023 to 1st and 6th.
A big part of that success came back to Macdonald’s ability to create pressure, where the Ravens had the 3rd-most sacks over his two seasons (108), and 4th-most turnovers (56).
His study of 3rd down defense proved especially effective, as his defenses not only kept teams from converting (36.9%, 7th-best), but had a remarkable propensity for taking the ball away. They led the league with a 3.8% turnover rate on 3rd downs over his tenure, and saw that rate climb to an eye-popping 5.5% on 3rd and long (7+ yards). Opponents turned it over 6.0% of the time on 3rd and long in his final season.
His defenses did all this while giving up the 5th-fewest explosive plays over those two years. Macdonald managed to find a formula that was high reward, low risk. That discovery opened the door for him to become the youngest head coach in the NFL.
When asked to reflect on the roots of Johnson here in Seattle as a linebackers coach as he stood behind a podium as a now-head coach, Macdonald smiled.
“You can connect the dots pretty easily from [Jim Johnson] to Coach Harbaugh and back to Baltimore,” Macdonald said. “A lot of our zone pressure schemes are rooted in Coach Johnson’s schemes. I don’t want to start ranking zone blitz guys but his stuff has stood the test of time and done it at a high level. It’s just someone you have so much respect for going through the process and developing as a young coach. I mean, his defenses were special, man. And so it’s cool that it kind of all comes full circle back [to Seattle].”
Yes, coach. It certainly is.