After last season, we said in multiple forums that Mike Macdonald is going to win a Super Bowl within the next three years.

We didn’t necessarily expect it to be this season — we thought this would be more like the 2012 ramp-up year. But the Seahawks won another shootout against the Rams, 31-27, in the NFC title game and Macdonald is now poised to fulfill our prediction even earlier than we really thought he would.

So why were we so confident? How did we know Macdonald had what it took to bring another championship to Seattle?

It started with defense. Macdonald was clearly a savant on that side — or a “disruptor,” as John Schneider called him when he hired him.

In 2024, he quickly flipped a defense that had severely underperformed in Pete Carroll’s last couple of seasons. That unit went from 25th in points allowed in 2023 to 11th in 2024. In EPA, it went from 30th to 10th. In DVOA, from 28th to 10th.

As obvious as it had been that the NFL had passed the septuagenarian Carroll by, it was super clear that Macdonald, then 36, was the next-generation genius.

More than the X’s and O’s though was his clear desire to create a cohesive squad that played with his “12 as 1” mantra. He knew when something was not working, and he and Schneider made the necessary moves.

Last March on Bryce Coutts’ podcast, we repeated that Macdonald would win a Super Bowl for Seattle.

“The guy has a very keen football mind, and the guy does not settle for mediocrity of any kind. When he sees something that is not working, he fixes it immediately. … This guy doesn’t tolerate losing.”

At midseason in 2024, they ditched the linebackers Schneider had signed in the offseason and traded for Ernest Jones IV. After a poor performance by the return specialists vs. the Jets in December, Macdonald cut BOTH of them.

The Seahawks hit double-digit wins for the first time in four years — going 10-7 and missing the playoffs on tiebreakers. The main reason for that failure was Ryan Grubb, the offensive coordinator Macdonald settled on by default after he was the last NFL coach hired in 2024 and most of the top NFL offensive assistants had gigs.

Grubb was outmatched in most of the Seahawks’ games. We were pretty positive by December that Macdonald would fire him after the season. And he did, the day after the last game.

Our post on that move led with this statement: “Mike Macdonald just showed he is serious about taking the Seahawks back to the Super Bowl.”

After a brief search, he landed on Klint Kubiak as his new OC. Kubiak brought a bunch of experienced assistants he knew: Rick Dennison, John Benton, Andrew Janocko and Justin Outten.

Then Macdonald and Schneider were thrown for a bit of a loop when Geno Smith declined to negotiate on a new deal and DK Metcalf asked for a trade. So Schneider shipped off both the quarterback and receiver and then replaced them with Sam Darnold and Cooper Kupp to finish off a near total offensive reset.

Darnold was probably the better choice at QB anyway as he knew Kubiak from their one year (2023) in San Francisco together. Kupp also knew the general scheme of Kubiak’s offense, having come from Sean McVay’s offense, which like Kubiak’s scheme is rooted in Mike Shanahan’s offense.

As we also said in that March conversation with Bryce, “Mike Macdonald intends to win playoff games next year. That’s why he brought in a whole (offensive) staff that knows each other.”

Cut to the season. While the running game really struggled to find any consistency behind an offensive line that added just one marquee guy, first-round pick Grey Zabel, Darnold and Jaxon Smith-Njigba lit up the NFL for the first 10 weeks of the season. Then teams finally changed how they were defending them, and Seattle’s running game got going.

The Hawks went from the No. 18 scoring offense in 2024 to No. 3 under Kubiak.

On top of that, the Seahawks had the No. 2 special teams unit in the NFL — a crew that scored five touchdowns. The Hawks set a team record with a plus-191 point differential.

Macdonald, Schneider and the coaching staff have put together a complete football team — one that can win any kind of game.

They beat the Rams for the second time in yet another shootout — Darnold leading the way with a critic-hushing performance in one of Kubiak’s best-called games of the season.

While Macdonald’s defense struggled against McVay and Matthew Stafford again, Kubiak and Darnold picked up the slack again. That’s Macdonald’s “12 as 1” mantra coming to life.

We had a strong hunch a year ago that Macdonald was going to take the Hawks to the promised land pretty soon — and here they are in his second season.

Now they just need to finish it off by beating the Patriots in Super Bowl LX.