The Seahawks have lost two straight, and are on the outside looking in for the playoffs. They will need to win at least one of their last two games to equal their win total from last season. Hopes of a breakout season under their new head coach Mike Macdonald are all but extinguished. Meanwhile, reports have surfaced that the man who won a Super Bowl here and was shown the door, Pete Carroll, has expressed interest in returning to the NFL to coach. It is a natural time to reflect on whether Seattle made the right move. Reaching a conclusion before the season completes is premature, but there are some strong signs that the bets ownership made by making the change are going to pay off.
Saying goodbye to greatness
Carroll will always be the first coach in franchise history to win a Super Bowl. He is beloved in Seattle not only for his on-field success but for his positive outlook and coaching style. His players loved him and so did fans. The reasons behind the decision to have him replaced were never fully publicized, but it is not hard to connect a few dots.
Carroll was a constant winner, with only one losing season in his final 12 seasons, but the franchise had been stuck in a purgatory that was never good enough to truly contend for a title or bad enough to get a franchise-altering high draft pick. One playoff win over the past eight seasons left a sense of stagnation.
Further, Carroll had made his name in football as a defensive coach, and his defenses had gone from the best the NFL has seen to among the worst.
The Legion of Boom led the NFL in points allowed for four straight seasons. Carroll tried to regroup and reload as those stars left or had their careers wind down. The new players they signed, traded for, and drafted, failed to come close to the previous standard. Carroll started searching for scheme changes as his philosophy of a simple defense to allow his players to play fast had been exploited for years by smart play callers and quarterbacks.
In particular, he was being regularly beaten by his division foes. He had lost 5 straight to Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers, and was 4-11 against Sean McVay over his last 15 games. Meanwhile, those teams were either winning or playing in Super Bowls nearly every year.
Carroll never lost the locker room. His players would give him everything they had. He tried multiple new defensive coordinators and new offensive coordinators. None were able to stop the downward slide on defense or create a scheme advantage on offense.
The final straw was likely an ugly home loss to a mediocre Pittsburgh Steelers team, quarterbacked by Mason Rudolph, in a game Seattle needed to make the playoffs. They were pushed around in a style Carroll professed but could no longer produce.
Moving on from Carroll came with risks not only on the field but for the business. He was the most popular coach in team history. Losing him soon after the most popular quarterback in team history makes for a tough sale, which the franchise has seen first hand this season with opposing fans snapping up thousands of seats.
Evaluating Mike Macdonald
Macdonald was an interesting choice of both contrast and continuation of what Carroll represented. Seattle went from the oldest coach in the NFL to the youngest. They went from bubbly and effusive to terse and withholding, from loquacious to succinct. But Macdonald also is defensive-minded. He also values running the football and playing a physical style on both sides of the ball. He cares about and for his players. He generally leads with positive reinforcement and protects his players from criticism.
The vision was to bring someone in who could create a clear advantage on one side of the ball. Macdonald would continue to call plays for the defense even as the head coach. The most important indicator of whether his tenure in Seattle had a chance to break the Seahawks out of their purgatory was going to be what kind of impact he could have in his area of speciality. The early returns are promising.
Seattle has reversed the downward spiral on defense by almost any measure. The last time the Seahawks defense ranked close to this in points allowed was in 2021, and there are some big asterisks to that season. The Seattle offense had the fewest turnovers in the league and opponents had the worst starting field position in the NFL. That defense faced the fewest possessions starting in their territory in the league. This Seahawks offense, unfortunately, has had far more struggles in protecting the football and Michael Dickson has had his worst season in terms of percentage of touchbacks. He had almost 10% more of his kicks downed inside the 20 in 2021 than he has so far this season.
Seattle currently ranks 11th in defensive DVOA overall, 11th in run defense DVOA, and 11th in pass defense DVOA. The last time the Seahawks had a defense that ranked 11th or better in each of those metrics was 2015.
Macdonald has managed to accomplish this turnover in spite of a turbulent stretch where his defense was unable to stop almost anything from opposing offenses. He also did it while changing large portions of his personnel during the season, including his entire starting linebacker corps, and playing most of the season without his best edge player in Uchenna Nwosu.
The collaboration between Macdonald and Schneider during the season has been promising. Many will point to a disastrous free agency in their first offseason together. Far more concerning would be if they continued to swing and miss after more time together and with the players. Macdonald has correctly identified weak spots, and Schneider has helped to supply improvements at a variety of positions. Macdonald has also unlocked levels of performance from previous player acquisitions from Schneider like Coby Bryant, Leonard Williams, Derick Hall, and Julian Love. His ability to identify Tyrice Knight in the 4th round has proven to be a key win.
Any head coach that has a clear specialization on one side of the ball needs to find the person they can lean on to handle the other side. Mike Holmgren had Fritz Shurmur in Green Bay. Carroll had Russell Wilson and Marshawn Lynch. Macdonald took a big swing, bringing a college coordinator into the NFL as a rookie play caller. The results have been mixed, but mostly disappointing.
Ryan Grubb has overseen an improvement in points and yards relative to the rest of the league. The efficiency numbers, however, are down and concerning. Seattle ranks 17th in passing DVOA and 19th overall on offense. They have not ranked that low in those categories since 2011.
The biggest problems have been in turnovers and run game that has been either ineffective or underutilized. Carroll always loved the idea of a 70%+ passer, and Grubb may help to deliver that in his first season as Smith is over that mark with two games to play. Still, his touchdown rate has dropped for the second consecutive season.
The offensive line has been among the worst in football even with encouraging steps forward from Charles Cross and Abe Lucas.
Brady Henderson of ESPN reported that a lot of the play callers Seattle was interested in were already spoken for by the time Macdonald was hired and ready to add his offensive coordinator. Henderson also reported that Macdonald had to be convinced that Grubb would run the ball enough given his proclivity toward passing in college.
It seems likely this marriage will last just one year. Grubb is a talented play caller, but seems to be at odds philosophically with Macdonald. Both could benefit from a separation.
Investing in improving the interior offensive line and finding a play caller that more closely aligns to Macdonald’s philosophy would make sense and could result in a large step forward. Carroll parted ways with his OC, Jeremy Bates, after one season in Seattle for similar reasons. Bates wrote his ticket out of town with a few too many deep fade routes on 3rd and short situations.
Breaking free of the messy middle
Casual fans will evaluate Macdonald purely based on wins and losses. If he wins the same as Carroll and is out of the playoffs just like his predecessor, they will claim nothing was gained from the change. That is a reductive way to evaluate the decision, and almost certainly not how the front office and ownership will look at it.
Macdonald was brought in to stop a free fall on defense and establish excellence on the side of the ball he specializes in. All signs are good on that front. Seattle has a foundation of young talent and proven advantages in play calling. It is has not been perfect, but the arrows are clearly pointing up.
He stumbled on offense and has had to learn on the fly about leading a team and handling all the responsibilities of being a head coach. It is a good sign that his team rebounded from a particularly poor stretch during the middle of the season. It is less of a good sign that his team has lost a number of games by more than one score. It took Carroll a number of years before he developed his offensive philosophy that completed the “circle of toughness” that helped him win multiple college championships and a Super Bowl ring. Macdonald will have a stronger sense of what he wants on offense after this season.
It took Carroll a couple of seasons to turn around a much older and much less talented roster. It took Holmgren even longer to find the right combination of talent to go from good-to-great. Macdonald has safely separated himself from the one-year-and-done reign of Jim Mora Jr. and the unsuccessful tenure of defensive-minded Brandon Staley who was unable to replicate his defensive success as a head coach.
Macdonald knows what he is doing and is a tireless worker. He has his player’s backs and also holds a high bar. One area Carroll started to struggle with was holding true to his mantra of Always Compete. Too many inferior players and coaches were allowed to hold onto significant roles on his team. Macdonald has found a good balance of providing opportunity without allowing unbounded poor performance.
He will get a full offseason to reflect on what he learned about his job, his players, and his coaches. He will have a larger voice in what happens in the draft and free agency and the offseason program. For the first time in years, there is a credible path to escaping the irrelevant mediocre middle of the NFL. That makes the change a success even ahead of the wins that will follow.