In Pete Carroll’s last
season in Seattle, his
platitudes and vague
descriptors about what needed to be fixed on the defense had worn super thin and it was so obvious that he really had no idea how he was going to fix the weakest part of his team after years of failing.

That’s why it is so refreshing to hear Mike Macdonald
quietly but confidently talk about how elite his defense is going to be. He outlines it so clearly that you can just see it happening — and not taking long either.

Whether he is talking about how expectations lead to Super Bowl wins, about his motto of Chasing Edges or about “building a wall up the middle” of his defense, he sounds assured that all of these things will happen.

His resume supports his words, which is why he evokes such confidence from so much of the fan base – a huge turnaround from the last couple years of the fading Carroll era.

Here are some of the encouraging things Macdonald said at the NFL owners meetings in Orlando this week, as reported by Michael-Shawn Dugar of The Athletic and John Boyle of Seahawks.com.

Winning mentality

“We are going to line up every week expecting to win; and, if you do that, you are going to win a championship. So that’s where my mentality is. We are getting ready to go play a football game, even though it’s (5-6) months out. And whoever lines up across from us, we are expecting to win that matchup. If you don’t have that mentality, you are not going to get very far in this league.”

You would expect every coach to bring optimism into his new position, but it is nice to see that Macdonald is not afraid to talk about winning the Super Bowl. It’s the main goal in the NFL, and he’s clearly not afraid of stating that expectation as if it is a not-so-distant reality.

Chasing Edges

“It’s a mindset in everything you do; you’re trying to push the envelope rather than react to everybody else. We want to set the standard in Seattle.”

He already has proven to be on the cutting edge of defensive football at both the college and NFL levels, and Chasing Edges is another way of saying he will be aggressive and innovative in strategizing how to beat the rest of the NFL and win Super Bowls.

This is why John Schneider hired him and why fans should be excited about the possibilities.

On defense, ‘Build a wall’

“We’re trying to build a wall up the middle. We’re trying to stay square, we’re trying to set hard edges, make the ball (go outside), make them throw the thing outside. You don’t want to get gashed up the middle of your defense. You’ve got to have the right guys who can play right there so you can get the job done.’’

This is a direct rebuke of the 2022-23 Seattle defense, which did indeed get gashed up the middle. And it makes us breathe a sigh of relief that Macdonald knows it has to be fixed and, even better, that he knows how he wants to fix it.

This should provide a big clue about what the Seahawks are looking to do in the draft on the defensive side. Macdonald wants a big nose tackle, pronto.

‘You’ve got to be able to blitz, man’

“If you want to play defense for us, you’ve got to be able to blitz, man. Whatever your one-on-one is, we expect you to win. We carry a team pass rush mentality. It’s not going to be built around one guy. It’s prudent to let everyone have a chance to win on any given play. But if you’re going to blitz from off the ball, we expect you to win one-on-one. … When the matchups are in our favor, hopefully we’re going to take advantage of those things.”

It sure sounds like Macdonald plans to unleash fury on opposing offenses. He has said he wants teams to feel like they are playing against 13 guys, and he does that by disguising his unit’s true intent and bringing pressure from all angles, taking advantage of any weakness he sees in the offense.

New linebackers Tyrel Dodson and Jerome Baker, plus safeties Rayshawn Jenkins, K’Von Wallace and Julian Love all figure to find their way into blitz packages. And don’t forget Devon Witherspoon and the other corners, too.

‘We ask a lot of our inside ‘backers’

“(Dodson and Baker) have played both spots. Two guys that can run. Two intelligent football players. Tough. I thought they were both good tacklers. They’re both good players in space. Those are things we’re asking of our inside ‘backers. Those guys gotta take up a lot of ground, man. They gotta play people out of the backfield, they gotta play all the choice routes on the weak side, which is hard to do. I think we got the right guys for the job. They’ve gotta blitz, play man-to-man. We ask a lot out of our inside ’backers.”

Macdonald clearly has a plan for Dodson and Baker, who are both highly rated in coverage. Run or pass, they will have a lot to do as they essentially audition for multi-year extensions.

Flexing the safeties

“It comes down to position flexibility, so you’re not just putting guys pigeonholed into roles. We’ll see what they do best, how they complement one another, see how they work together. But I think it gives us some flexibility to possibly be in some three-safety sets based on how it shakes out at nickel, then we’ll kind of go from there.”

The former staff always wanted to play three safeties, but injuries usually killed that idea. We’ll see how the trio of Love, Jenkins and Wallace come together ahead of the season.

O-line under construction

“It’s a work in progress. We’re not done by any stretch of the imagination. There’s some great competition going to happen in that room, and we expect high-level play this year from those guys. We’re at work at it. We’re not hitting the panic button or anything like that; we don’t play until September. (There is) a lot of time to figure out who the right guys are and the right opportunities to make the team the best we can.”

As we all know, “great competition” is coach speak for “Yeah, we’re really weak there.” That’s clearly the case on the interior offensive line. The Hawks will definitely add a vet and then likely try to add a guard in the draft (we’re thinking Day 3). There’s little reason to be optimistic right now about this unit. It might be “a work in progress” all season.

Take a swing on a QB?

“If there’s a guy that’s sitting, facing us in whatever round, it’s just the responsible thing to do to try to make your team better. It’s hard to find young, great quarterbacks in the league. It’s tough. Sometimes you’ve got to take swings at the plate to hit them.”

The trade for Sam Howell certainly qualifies as taking a swing and almost certainly rules out a high pick for a QB in this draft (Schneider said they did the math on teams in need vs. talent available and concluded they needed to make the trade). But it is entirely possible that Schneider uses a mid-round pick on a passer and then lets Ryan Grubb and his staff coach him up alongside Geno Smith and Howell.

That certainly would create a lot of intrigue for 2025.