RENTON, Wash. — It was a defensive-centric head coach who brought the Seattle Seahawks their only Super Bowl title.
Now they hope a newer — albeit much younger — version of the same type of leader can return them to the elite of the NFL after hiring Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald as head coach on Wednesday.
Macdonald, 36, arrives in Seattle as the youngest head coach in the league and half the age of the man he’s replacing: Pete Carroll, who was let go on Jan. 10 after 14 seasons in charge during the most successful run in franchise history.
Macdonald spent the past two years running Baltimore’s defense, including this season, when the Ravens finished with the NFL’s best regular-season record and advanced to this past Sunday’s AFC championship game, where they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs.
This will be the first head coaching position at any level for Macdonald. However, he has been surrounded by successful coaches as he moved up the ranks, starting with an extended run on the staff of John Harbaugh in Baltimore before spending a season under Jim Harbaugh at the University of Michigan. Jim, who is John’s younger brother, returned to the NFL last week when the former San Francisco 49ers coach was hired to take over the Los Angeles Chargers.
Seattle made it clear that Macdonald was one of its top candidates when it didn’t move forward on a hire prior to the conference championship games. Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, a former head coach for the Atlanta Falcons, seemed a clear front-runner because of his past connections to Seattle. The longer the Seahawks went without moving ahead with Quinn, though, the more it became obvious there were other options being considered.
Macdonald and Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson were the last two candidates interviewed by the Seahawks before the final decision was made.
“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 told the team’s website. “We’re going to be here for a long time, and we’re going to win a lot of football games.”
One of the unknowns will be how Macdonald meshes with an organization that was shaped around Carroll’s philosophy for more than a decade. Seahawks general manager John Schneider said one of the mandates from team owner/chair Jody Allen was to keep a level of Carroll’s culture in place.
How Macdonald manages that will be one of the questions.
Macdonald is a University of Georgia graduate. He coached high school football in Athens while still a college student, then worked as a grad assistant for the Bulldogs in 2010 before spending three years on staff under Mark Richt. Macdonald broke into the NFL with the Ravens as a coaching intern in 2014, moving up to defensive assistant, defensive backs coach and linebackers coach through 2020 before going to Michigan to run the defense for the Wolverines.
After returning to Baltimore, Macdonald had one of the top scoring defenses in the league over the past two seasons. This season, the Ravens ranked sixth in total defense while playing an aggressive style that should please Seahawks fans who grew frustrated by a defensive regression from the prime seasons when Carroll was in charge.
That will be part of Macdonald’s overall task in Seattle after the franchise had grown stagnant. Carroll was the most successful coach in franchise history and brought Seattle its only Super Bowl title 10 years ago, but the latter stages of his tenure fell flat.
The Seahawks missed the playoffs for the second time in three seasons in 2023 and finished 9-8 for a second straight year. Seattle has not won a playoff game since 2019 and hasn’t advanced past the divisional round since the 2014 season.
Seatle was expected to close the gap with the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC West this season; instead, the 49ers continued to dominate the division, while the Los Angeles Rams quickly rebuilt themselves into a playoff team.
Having Macdonald in charge should help improve a Seattle defense that ranked near the bottom of the NFL in most statistical categorie; this past season, the Ravens became the first team since 1970 to lead the league in fewest points allowed, most sacks and most takeaways. And he’ll have talent to use with the likes of defensive end Dre’Mont Jones, safety Julian Love, linebackers Boye Mafe and Uchenna Nwosu, and cornerbacks Devon Witherspoon and Riq Woolen under contract with the Seahawks for at least the next couple of seasons.
Just as important for Macdonald will be identifying a creative offensive coordinator who can draw more out of what the team already has with quarterback Geno Smith, wide receivers DK Metcalf and Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and running backs Zach Charbonnet and Kenneth Walker III.