In the 1970s, when the Super Bowl grew from being another league championship game into one of the planet’s biggest events, there were some coaches like the Seattle Seahawks’ Mike Macdonald. That is to say, there were highly successful head coaches who focused on the defensive side of the ball.
For nearly an entire decade, from Dallas’ Tom Landry in 1971 to Pittsburgh’s Chuck Noll in 1979, the Super Bowl was won by a team with a defensive-minded head coach. Old timers recall it fondly as the last era in which teams prioritized running the ball and defensive lines got nicknames.
Then came Bill Walsh and Joe Gibbs, and the era of offense began. Despite several notable exceptions – Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick – the last forty-five years have featured an unstoppable shift toward more and more offense. In such a heavily tilted universe, Seattle’s Macdonald might prove to be the ideal form of counter-programming.
Fox Sports’ Greg Olsen tags Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald with a lofty honor
Consequently, when an astute analyst like Greg Olsen labels Macdonald as the defensive version of Los Angeles’ Sean McVay, everyone ought to take notice.
McVay is the state-of-the-art young offensive genius that every team covets. Not yet 40, he has already been to two Super Bowls and claimed one Lombardi Trophy. Despite going all in just a few years ago to win with veteran Matthew Stafford, McVay rebuilt seemingly overnight and once again has a legitimate champion contender.
One of his biggest challenges will be getting past Macdonald’s Seahawks.
When Hawks’ GM John Schneider went looking for a new coach to replace franchise legend Pete Carroll after the 2023 season, Macdonald was a hot name – but far from the hottest. These days, that honor is usually reserved for offensive gurus. In 2024, Detroit’s Ben Johnson was the coveted name.
But Schneider always seemed more interested in a defensive coach. He conducted second interviews with four coaches who came from the ranks of defensive coordinators. The number would have been five, but Raheem Morris took the Atlanta job before his return trip to Seattle.
Schneider only interviewed three offensive coordinators a second time.
Macdonald, in part due to Baltimore’s post-season success, was the last candidate Schneider met with. He had wrapped up second interviews with most of the hopefuls before Macdonald arrived for his initial meeting. But it seemed immediately apparent that Macdonald was the coach Schneider wanted.
First and foremost, the GM recognized that in order to return the Hawks’ to the glory days of Pete Carroll, a new coach would have to outwit McVay in Los Angeles and Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco. Both are acclaimed as innovative offensive masterminds.
Rather than try to out-offense such brilliance, Schneider zagged where others zigged. He would find a young defensive genius to subdue the offenses.
This was both simple and risky. The Seahawks had fallen into a rut with Carroll. Carroll was another defensive genius, and typically, when a team makes such a move, it wants a culture change. That often means going from a defensive-minded coach to an offensive one – or vice versa.
Furthermore, recent championship history overwhelmingly favors coaches from the offensive side of the ball. In the last 30 years, Super Bowls have been won by offensive-minded head coaches at a two-to-one clip. If you factor out Bill Belichick, the results are even more biased.
Of the 21 coaches who have hoisted the Lombardi Trophy since 1996, 15 have come from offense. Only five have come from defense. (Baltimore’s John Harbaugh, a former special teams coordinator, is the other.)
In recent years, two teams have lost both offensive and defensive coordinators in the same off-season. The two former offensive coaches – Shane Steichen and Ben Johnson – have a combined record of 17-7 this season. Their defensive counterparts – Jonathan Gannon and Aaron Glenn – are 6-18.
The smart money would seem to be on the offensive coaches. Unless you can get the defensive equivalent of Sean McVay.
Macdonald may be young – he turned 38 last summer – but his credentials are impeccable. He began assisting at Georgia, then learned the NFL game with seven years in Baltimore. He served under esteemed defensive minds Dean Pees and Wink Martindale, and also worked alongside former head coach (and his current assistant) Leslie Frazier.
When he wanted to move up to coordinator, he went back to college, to one of the blue blood programs at Michigan for a season. Then he was ready to return to the pros and inherit the prestigious job of Ravens’ defensive coordinator.
In his second season back with the Ravens, Macdonald’s unit led the NFL in points allowed, yards per play, and turnovers. He devised creative ways to generate pressure on opposing QBs without resorting to numerous blitzes. He prized fast, versatile defenders who could fill multiple roles, allowing him to move them around and confuse the offense.
A quick look at the athletes he has added since arriving in Seattle less than two years ago shows how he has implemented a similar strategy with the Seahawks. DeMarcus Lawrence, Ernest Jones, Nick Emmanwori – they can line up all over the field and do virtually anything.
They seem to grow more comfortable each week. If Julien Love can return, that defense will be at full strength and will be hard for anyone to handle. Even an offensive genius like Sean McVay.
Thus far, Macdonald is 1-2 against McVay in head-to-head matchups. His win came in the final game of last season when the Rams were resting players before the playoffs. But look at how Macdonald’s defense has evolved from 2024 to 2025.
In two games against the Rams last year, the Hawks gave up an average of 385 yards per game and allowed 5.8 yards per play. Earlier this year, in Los Angeles, that same defense allowed McVay’s team just 249 total yards and 5.0 yards per play.
If he is able to maintain this, Macdonald won’t be the Sean McVay of defense. He’ll simply be acknowledged as one of the best coaches in the league.
