Sometimes, because of Mike Macdonald’s immediate success, we forget he is a young coach — just in his third year.
It was so easy to think he had figured it all out when he led the Seahawks to a Super Bowl title in 2025. But the bumps are coming high and hard this season. And that’s on Macdonald. It’s also going to be on him to make the changes needed to get over the humps and avoid wasting this season.
In 2025, Macdonald smartly replaced Ryan Grubb, his first offensive coordinator, with Klint Kubiak. Reunited with Kubiak, Sam Darnold thrived and the offense complemented Macdonald’s elite defense well enough to land an NFL championship.
But, with Kubiak gone, this season has been a real struggle. Darnold regressed under rookie OC Brian Fleury, and now the QB is hurt again. Both of those problems are Macdonald’s fault.
When the Bears went ahead 34-17 on Monday night, with around four minutes left, that should have been it for Darnold and Jaxon Smith-Njigba (and anyone else the coaches did not want to get hurt). Instead, Macdonald left Darnold in for a pointless final possession — and he apparently suffered a quadriceps injury that will now keep him out at least this week.
Instead of taking the blame for it, the coach just talked up how tough Darnold was for also playing through a broken rib he suffered early in the game. No one apparently knew about it until well after the game, but it explains why Darnold was off target on over a third of his passes.
Two weeks ago, we wanted Darnold benched for Drew Lock after a third loss in which his mistakes factored huge. Macdonald chose to stick with him, and the starter played a solid, not spectacular, game in a 20-3 win against Kansas City.
But Darnold and the entire offense regressed against a really punishing Chicago defense — and now the QB is out for at least this week, thanks to Macdonald’s poor choice to leave him in when the game was out of control.
Lock will start yet again vs. Arizona — as he did in a 31-7 win in Week 2. But this time Lock is injured, too — a mysterious elbow injury that has bothered him for several weeks and sounds likely to limit him this time. So we can expect the offense to struggle again, although the Hawks still figure to win comfortably the defense dominates Gardner Minshew (replacing the traded Jacoby Brissett) and company.
This Darnold injury is just the latest problem for a disjointed Seattle offense that has struggled with a jittery quarterback, a novice play caller, an unstable line and a depleted backfield.
If Lock plays better than expected with the troublesome elbow and leads the offense as well as he did in the first two games, Macdonald will have a decision to make during the bye week.
Meanwhile, plenty of fans are calling for Fleury to be replaced. Obviously that is not going to happen this week. Macdonald seems to feel the offense has enough good things going that it can build consistency.
Of course, that might take a few more weeks. The newly configured offensive line was dominated by Jeffery Simmons and the Bears. Grey Zabel admitted he did not play well in his move to right guard. It will take time for him to figure it out, but Macdonald said the coaches prefer that to leaving Anthony Bradford there.
The Seahawks fortunately play a couple of the worst defenses in the league over the next two weeks. It should offer a buffer for the line to begin to jell ahead of the bye.
But Fleury needs to call games a lot more like he did vs. Kansas City and on a couple drives in the second half against Chicago. Be aggressive, be unpredictable. Help the players out, especially the quarterback.
The offense has to get it together by the time the Hawks play the 49ers in Week 12.
If the unit is still stumbling and then is once again the reason Seattle loses to the 49ers, Macdonald might have another decision to make.
Will the young coach be willing to do what it takes to save this season?
