Mike Macdonald’s defense isn’t just winning games for the Seahawks. It’s making people go back, rewatch the tape, and rethink what they thought they knew.
Seattle entered Week 1 with plenty of noise around the Los Angeles Rams, but the Seahawks are the team still sitting at the front of the conversation. The attention has spilled well beyond the usual NFL debate machine, too, with online analysts piling in to break down what Macdonald is building.
Stephen A. Smith, who had the Rams at No. 1 going into the first week, put it bluntly: “Mike Macdonald has these boys playing like rough riders.”
That kind of reaction makes sense after what Seattle did defensively. Macdonald’s group led the league last year by allowing 17.2 points per game, and the scary part is that the unit keeps getting sharper.
In the fourth quarter alone, the Seahawks piled up three interceptions and three sacks. According to John Boyle, it was the first time a Seahawks team had done that since Earl Thomas III and Richard Sherman pulled off three interceptions of their own in 2016 against the New York Jets.
This wasn’t empty production, either. Jon Gruden pointed out that in the Super Bowl, heading into the fourth quarter, the Patriots “had 7 punts and 8 completed passes.” The point lands: Macdonald’s defense is built to squeeze an offense until it stops breathing.
The tape crowd has noticed. Across X/Twitter/Bluesky/TikTok/Instagram/EVEN Facebook, the Seahawks have become a favorite subject for breakdowns, especially around how Macdonald attacks protections. The examples floating around are all about how pass rush and coverage work together in his structure, and even Richard Sherman - who has frustratingly backed the rival 49ers over the last few years - has been openly excited about Macdonald’s Xs and Os.
There’s also belief inside the building. Ernest Jones thinks this defense is only beginning to hit its stride, and Macdonald sounds just as convinced.
He called Wednesday “a special night to be a Seahawk,” then added that “we can get so much better very quickly.”
Macdonald has spent plenty of his media availability sessions praising both his staff and his players for making the scheme work. He singled out Nehemiah Pritchett, saying he “played a dynamite game.”
He also credited the bigger-picture collaboration behind the defense. “Our player leadership and our coaches -- of finding solutions, of how to adjust our rush plan to in real time based off of the things that we’re seeing and how we want to adjust our coverages in real time is some high-powered stuff.
You know, that’s our staff. That’s our players doing those things.”
He doubled down on that theme when talking about the group around him: “Our coaching staff has a tremendous amount of respect for our players. What we’re asking them to do is not easy. How they do it, their approach, their mentality, how they treat each other.”
The results have been hard to ignore. Macdonald is the youngest coach in NFL history to win 11 in a row, and Seattle has now gone 29-straight games without allowing a 100-yard rusher.
The Seahawks will have to keep it rolling with an uncertain timeline around starting quarterback Sam Darnold’s return. Next up is an Arizona Cardinals team that shocked the world and will get another shot, with its speckled rivalry jersey aura.
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