Wednesday marks Mike Macdonald’s 176th birthdayth day as head coach of the Seahawks.
It will be the first day that members of the team’s famously rabid fan base will be able to see him do his job in person.
Macdonald’s work so far has been behind the scenes, helping general manager John Schneider assemble the roster during free agency and the draft and overseeing the offseason program, with practices conducted either in private or with just a few members of the media and select others on hand.
On Wednesday, he finally steps out of the shadows and into the sunlight of the VMAC fields as the Seahawks begin training camp with one of 10 practices open to the public, with the usual crowd of about 2,500 expected on the berm.
What will they see?
For starters, what they won’t see for the first time since 2009 is Pete Carroll and his ubiquitous pack of gum, Nike Air Monarchs, and usually gloved hands roaming every corner (and doing a few 100-meter sprints for good measure).
In the spring, Macdonald exuded a more methodical air, typically wearing a baseball cap during practices, something Carroll almost never did, and which made Macdonald harder to find on the field.
During practices, he carried a walkie-talkie and called defensive plays to the green-dot linebacker (something Carroll also didn’t do, leaving play-calling to the coordinators).
“He brings his own style to Seattle and that’s what I like,” Seahawks receiver DK Metcalf said. “He’s not trying to copy what anybody has done in the past. He’s just bringing Mike Macdonald to the Seattle Seahawks.”
It’s a style that lends itself to easy categorization as more serious or more professional. But that kind of description would be a disservice to Carroll, who for all the prominence he gave to some of his eccentricities was professional and serious enough to lead the Seahawks to their first Super Bowl victory and a 137-89-1 record that is the best in franchise history.
As Macdonald becomes the team’s ninth coach in its 49-year history, comparisons to Carroll are inevitable.
On paper, the change is about as drastic as a team could make in going from a 72-year-old coach, who was the oldest coach in the league, to a 37-year-old coach, who is the youngest.
Change is what the Seahawks were looking for after missing the playoffs two of the last three years and posting a 25-26 record along the way, seasons the organization said seemed to show that while Carroll may forever be considered the best coach in team history, all good things must come to an end.
Much attention was paid in the spring to a few minor cosmetic changes made following Macdonald’s hiring, such as removing some of the wallpaper in a hallway of the team’s practice facility that featured highlights from the Carroll era, and having players wear game jerseys instead of practice jerseys during on-field drills. It’s something Macdonald said he took from his time as an assistant in Baltimore and is meant to remind players that they’re not just practicing for the sake of practicing, but preparing to win on game day.
The music played during practices was also less loud because of the emphasis on teaching new patterns and tactics. Macdonald said he was still trying to find “the right balance” and that the music, like many things, could be changed along the way.
While everyone tends to be optimistic following the hiring of a new coach, the spring players could hardly have been more impressed with what Macdonald — who, like Carroll, made his name working as a defensive assistant and coordinator — was doing behind the scenes.
“He’s a brain, so he’s very smart and intellectual,” cornerback Devon Witherspoon said. “It’s the way he builds his defense. It’s not natural or normal in the league. That’s what makes him different.”
Outside linebacker Boye Mafe said: “He’s a guy, I can tell, he watches the ball and I can see how detail-oriented he is. He’s a very detail-oriented person and so for us, it’s one of those things that you have to match that energy and make sure we know what he wants and what his vision is for the team and what he wants it to look like and do our best to replicate that.”
While Macdonald’s age and the contrast with Carroll are obvious, one of his traits that most impressed the Seahawks was the sense he exuded of being mature beyond his years.
This is a guy who, as a seventh-grader in Roswell, Georgia — a city of just over 90,000 that’s considered a suburb of Atlanta and about 90 miles from Athens — would watch film his dad took of his games to try to figure out how he could improve and earn more playing time.
He helped coach at Cedar Shoals (Georgia) High School while attending the University of Georgia as an undergraduate.
He spent four years as a student and then graduate assistant at Georgia while completing his undergraduate degree in finance and a master’s degree in sports management, which he received in 2013 — the year the Seahawks won their first and only Super Bowl.
“It all happened very quickly for him,” Schneider said on the day of Macdonald’s introductory news conference on Feb. 1. “But when you sit down with him and meet him, you understand why.”
Macdonald dismissed the idea that he was a child prodigy who pulled off a master plan to become a head coach at a relatively young age.
He says it all happened simply because he did his job to the best of his ability.
“Yeah, when I hear people say you’ve progressed really quickly, it makes me a little uncomfortable, because that’s not really the goal,” Macdonald said Feb. 1. “You’re trying to be in the role that you have to help the team the best you can. Ultimately, as your roles and responsibilities increase, your ability to do that increases. I think that’s the mindset you have to have.”
His responsibility is now as great as it can be in his chosen profession.
Macdonald is tasked with not only following in the footsteps of one of the most successful coaches in Seattle sports history and one of 14th the most wins in NFL history, but also to return the Seahawks to the heights that Carroll once reached but had struggled to reach again in recent seasons.
MacDonald always acted as if this was a moment he had been preparing for a long time.
“I think we had a pretty clear vision of how we wanted practice to go,” he said after one of his first meetings with the team in May. “We wanted it to be fast, efficient, loud, get the job done and get out of here. There’s not a lot of loitering. Again, you don’t practice to practice. You practice to practice and play. A lot of the decisions we make are driven by that.”
Now it is time to unveil these principles to the entire football world.