Preparing For A Big Game On A Short Week & Other Takeaways From Mike Macdonald’s Monday Press Conference
1. How the Seahawks are preparing for a Saturday game.
On a normal week with a Sunday game, the Seahawks, like most NFL teams, would start their practice week on Wednesday, with practices on Thursday and Friday as well, along with some sort of walkthrough speed work on Saturday. Facing the 49ers on Saturday night, and on the road, compresses that schedule for the Seahawks. With the game being on the West Coast, the Seahawks will travel Friday, which was the starting point for building out the schedule, Macdonald explained, and the week will be something of a hybrid between a normal week and the type of schedule they would have for a Thursday game. By the time the Seahawks get to Wednesday and Thursday, it will look more like a normal week, just with everything pushed up a day, but Macdonald said they’ll go easier on Tuesday than they would on a Wednesday in a normal week.
“It’s a West Coast trip, so it’s a one-day trip for us, so you start there and work backwards,” Macdonald said. “There’s a balance of, how do you get your guys recovered and body ready to go, and also, how many reps do you get, at what speed? Things like that. We have a plan, the guys are going to come in tomorrow afternoon. It’s kind of like a Thursday-Sunday combo, if that makes sense. But then once we hit the ground on Wednesday, the scheduling is, this Wednesday, football Thursday, and we’ll take it from there. But tomorrow will be a little bit different for the guys.”
2. Not much news on the injury front.
The Seahawks lost Pro-Bowl returner and receiver Rashid Shaheed to a concussion in Sunday’s win, and while Macdonald said Shaheed seemed to be doing well on Monday, the way league’s concussion protocol is structured, the Seahawks won’t know until late in the week if he can play on Saturday.
Macdonald said he also didn’t know a timeline on safety Coby Bryant (knee) and left tackle Charles Cross (hamstring) who missed Sunday’s game due to injury.
“I really don’t have any updates,” Macdonald said when asked about Shaheed. “It seems like it’s going well with Rashid. With those other guys, right now honestly, we just don’t have any update on timeframes or anything like that. We’re really going to be playing that throughout the week.”
3. Sunday’s game wasn’t Sam Darnold’s best, but he still did things to help the Seahawks win.
The Seahawks didn’t put up big numbers in the passing game on Sunday, with Sam Darnold completing 18 of 27 passes for 147 yards, one score and one interception, and there were two turnovers, an interception in the end zone and a fumble that occurred when Darnold’s arm was hit as he threw. But Darnold also had some big moments, including a touchdown pass to AJ Barner and multiple impressive throws on drives late in the game that helped the Seahawks close out the win.
It wasn’t a great performance, but it was still winning football, and as Macdonald noted—getting in a great vocabulary word while he was at it—both plays were reviewed and very easily could have been ruled incomplete passes, the first because Darnold’s arm appeared to be barely moving forward, and the second because it looked like Panthers cornerback Mike Jackson might have had a toe just out of the back of the end zone while getting his second foot down.
“The numbers yesterday show that wasn’t his best game,” Macdonald said. “Like I said after the game, Sam did what we needed to do to win the game. Now, you’re an angstrom away from that being an incomplete pass, and we’ll see where the toe was on the interception, and all of a sudden, now you have a no-turnover game and no one’s talking about it. Can we make some better decisions, can we clean up some fundamentals? Yeah, absolutely. That goes for everybody, that’s the same story every game. But I talked to Sam this morning, he’s in great spirits. He’s the same guy every day, did the things we needed to win.”
4. AJ Barner is a ‘catalyst’ for the offense.
This season, AJ Barner has become a player Seattle has leaned on in big play moments, as well as short yardage, fourth-down situations, both of which he has been successful at. During his rookie year when he had 30 receptions for 245 yards and four touchdowns, there were flashes of the impact he could have for the Seahawks. And this season, he’s made sure there were no questions about his importance to Seattle’s offense. In Sunday’s win, Barner finished the game with three receptions for 43 yards and a touchdown, one of those receptions being a third-and-nine conversion for 16 yards. He also drew an offside call during Seattle’s version of the “tush push.”
“I’ll tell you what, I’m really proud of AJ,” Macdonald said. “I feel like every player we ask about the that’s had a great year, it’s like, this guy had a great offseason. But it’s the truth. It’s just like, that’s how it works. It doesn’t just you know, just pop up out of nowhere, and all of a sudden, the guy’s making plays. I mean, his approach from when the season ended, the places where he trained, the effort, the attitude that he’s had in the building, he’s a spark plug. He’s a catalyst for our offense, and I know Klint (Kubiak) wants to get him the ball more, and he deserves it. And when he does, he makes things happen, and I know he’s blocking his tail off as well in the in the C gap and out. Just really proud of him. He’s done a heck of a job.”
On Sunday, Barner surpassed 500 yards receiving on the season and is Seattle’s third-leading pass catcher behind Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Cooper Kupp. He is also averaging 10.1 yards a reception and his one touchdown against the Panthers brought his season total to six, along with one rushing touchdown.
Macdonald said, “I thought this was part of our vision when we started to learn more about him, when he was here. We felt like he could be a Y-tight end, we drafted him, and [he] contributed to the pass game. Probably not sure about, route tree, how far it could go, but once we realized what type of guy he was, I mean, to me, it was like the sky’s the limit with this guy.”
5. Seattle will ‘keep attacking’ slow starts on offense.
In Seattle’s past four games, the offense has struggled to get going. In Week 14, Seattle headed into halftime tied 6-6, in Week 15 it was down 13-6, in Week 16 it was 13-7 and in Week 17 it was 3-3. Despite that, Seattle’s point differential is the best in the NFL at 181, thanks to playing with a very good defense. Macdonald said it’s difficult to pinpoint one reason for the slow starts.
“It’s kind of like our run game, you know? We’ve had some games where we’ve started really great. We’ve had some games that we haven’t, and we’ve been able to rebound. I think it’s hard to attribute it to just one thing. If not, I think we would have probably found a solution by now, but I’ll tell you what. Our guys were into it. It’s not easy getting up and having your energy ready. You have to do it, you know, going east and things like that, but you have to be very intentional about it. And I thought our guys were ready to go. I thought our guys prepped really well; I thought they had great energy before the game. That’s easier said than done. And so, I think we just got to keep attacking it. Keep looking at the openers, keep seeing who’s executing what and how we want to attack their structures, making sure our operation’s right, that’s going to go a long way. I wish I had a single answer for you, but I know our guys are doing the inputs that we want. I think we’re just not getting the results we want right now.”
