When Pete Carroll took over the Seattle Seahawks in 2010, he, general manager John Schneider, and an able personnel staff led by the legendary Scot McCloughan whipsawed through the rosters they had with a dizzying array of changes. Through the draft and free agency, it didn't take that group too long to assemble the Legion of Boom — one of the greatest defenses in NFL history, and the only team in the Super Bowl to lead the NFL in points allowed four years in a row (2012-2015). The Seahawks banked one Super Bowl win mostly out of that defense, and came up agonizingly close to becoming the first team since the 2003-2004 New England Patriots to repeat as NFL champs — a feat the most recent Kansas City Chiefs have actually accomplished.
In the years since, however, Seattle's defenses started to fall off their perches. 2023 was Carroll's last year in charge, and the team's 9-8 record and missed playoff opportunity for the second time in a three-season stretch hastened his demise. Carroll is one of the most brilliant defensive minds of his era, but it wasn't showing on the field. The 2023 Seahawks ranked 28th in Defensive DVOA, a drop from their 22nd ranking in 2022, and 20th ranking in 2021.
Clearly, things were going downhill.
To replace Carroll, the Seahawks made what looked to be the most intelligent choice in the person of Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald. Through his second season in that position, Macdonald extracted career years from at least eight Baltimore defenders — Jadeveon Clowney, Justin Madubuike, Kyle Hamilton, Geno Stone, Michael Pierce, Roquan Smith, Patrick Queen, and Odafe Oweh. Certainly from a defensive perspective Macdonald had the skins on the wall to prove that he was the man to regenerate the culture of excellence in the Emerald City.
I pegged Seattle's defense to be one of the NFL's most radically different in 2024 , and it's not just that Macdonald might like different schematic ideas than Carroll did — it's more about the fact that Macdonald is so good at tying pressure to coverage, and his defenses seem to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
"I thought they did a great job of playing coverages where you're like, 'I don't know what the (heck) I'm going against,' because of the way they're teaching guys," Los Angeles head coach Sean McVay recently told Robert Mays of The Athletic Football Show about Macdonald's Ravens defense, which the Rams couldn't quite solve in a 37-31 Week 14 overtime loss last season. "They teach an understanding of how route concepts distribute and how you don't have to work as hard throughout the course of the down to allow things to be able to progress.
"You felt like you were playing against 13 players sometimes... They were such a well-coordinated and a well-executed defense from the players to the coaches. And I respect the coordinators the most that you can see an intent behind what they're trying to get done. And I thought that showed up consistently on his tape."
Macdonald's debut with the Seahawks came against the NFL's other Los Angeles team — the Chargers. And if this is what the defense is going to look like in the regular season, Macdonald hasn't just transcended the usual rookie head coach transition gap; he could be on the fast track to getting Seattle's defense back into a very scary place for opposing offenses.
From everywhere and nowhere.
With Pete Carroll's recent defenses, you tended to know what you were going to get. Seattle had moved away from a predominant single-high defense to a more equal balance of two-high stuff, but it was heavy zone (mostly Cover-3). One reason a lot of NFL defenses are moving away from Cover-3 to more Quarters coverage is that the NFL's increasing use of 2x2 and 3x1 receiver splits give offenses more ways to easily defeat zone coverage to either side with one safety up top.
Macdonald's coverage matrix, per Pro Football Focus, was quite a different animal. The Seahawks lined up in six different coverage concepts, and utilized five of them more than 10 percent of the time.
That was on the back end. On the front end, the Seahawks bedeviled the Chargers' offensive line in the way every defensive coach wants it to happen — without bringing extra rushers.
No, the Seahawks defense was not having to deal with quarterback Justin Herbert, but the Chargers' backup quarterbacks — Easton Stick, Max Duggan, and Luis Perez — combined to complete passes on 32 attempts for 133 yards, no touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 42.8. Jim Harbaugh's new offense failed to score — or even produce a first down — on its first six drives in a 16-3 loss.
“The offense struggled," Harbaugh said after the game. "It took us until our seventh drive before we had a first down. There’s always work to be done, a lot of work to be done. Now, we’ve begun, which is positive and we got a place to start. Yeah, offensively there were some good things. Not near enough. It’s back to work — you retool, you regroup and you get back to work on Monday.”
As for Macdonald, he seemed to know he was on to something.
“We played the majority of our starters on defense, so we definitely wanted to start fast and get a feel for getting the calls in, subs getting to experience situational ball for real, and the guys were locked in," he said. "I thought we did a good job of getting the calls in fast and the guys communicated well on the back end, especially when [the Chargers] started going fast there. I think it was [the] third drive or so. It was very important.”
Safety Coby Bryant's interception of an Easton Stick pass with 13:12 left in the first half was an example of what Macdonald wanted with his defense working together. Seattle was in Cover-6, and Stick tried to hit tight end Hayden Hurst on an intermediate over route. Safety K'Von Wallace broke that up with a well-timed hit, and Bryant was right there for the ball.
“That’s team football, man," Macdonald said. "There was a good pocket, the guys communicated, made the right checks in the back end, ran their spots on play action and attacked the football. When it comes to us, let's go make the play and try to go score.”
As for the fronts, the obvious star was first-round rookie defensive tackle Byron Murphy II from Texas, but as was the case with Macdonald's Ravens, there were contributors everywhere. Edge-rusher Boye Mafe, who had a breakout campaign in his second NFL season in 2023 with nine sacks and 58 total pressures, was all over the place.
There will be adjustments, but it was a great start.
It said a lot about Macdonald's players that he felt that he could put so much of his scheme on the field right away. With all those schematic changes, and new personnel to boot, things could have been dicey. But they weren't, and that bodes well for Seattle's defensive future.
“It’s very important," Macdonald said of his first game as a head coach. "I thought that for the most part we were on point with our decision making and gave all the necessary information. I thought all that stuff was about as good as expected, but it’s tricky. You're calling the game on defense, you're making adjustments, and then you're back on offense. That’s the way it goes. So you have to be good, you have to be on point. We’re expected to be sharp moving forward, and that's my responsibility.”
We will next see this defense against the Tennessee Titans on Saturday; one more opportunity for Mike Macdonald to show how he intends to create a new Legion of Boom over time.
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