There were no awkward pauses when Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald joined comedian Jimmy Kimmel for an interview on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
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Just a lot of laughs and an ear-to-ear grin that never left the face of the Super Bowl-winning head coach.
Macdonald joined Kimmel on Monday and discussed several topics with the longtime late night host, ranging from why Macdonald was staring up into the sky right after the Seahawks won, the support of Seahawks fans at Levi’s Stadium and why Seattle has a defensive play call named after a famous rapper.
So what was Macdonald staring at when he was surrounded by cameras after beating the Patriots? It sounds as if it may have been another “classic overthink.”
“I have a bad history with memes now between that and, ‘I did not care,’” said Macdonald, referencing his now-famous response on the podium to Michael Strahan after Seattle’s NFC Championship victory. “It was funny, it all happened really fast. We were trying to tackle the guy inbounds so the game would end. The game’s over and one of our coaches is like, ‘Hey, you just won the Super Bowl.’
“… Then the Gatorade came, which is awesome, but then there’s camera everywhere. So I’m, like, awkward. I’m not trying to look at the cameras. I don’t know what to do. There’s fireworks going, so my head goes up and I’m looking at the fireworks.”
As for the support from the 12s at the Super Bowl, Macdonald said it made a key difference.
“It was incredible. It must’ve been 75/25 (Seahawks fans to Patriots fans) it felt like,” he said. “When you come play a road game, it’s hard to do like a verbal cadence for the quarterback to snap the ball because he can’t hear. So you have to have some sort of silent, we call it silence cadence where you lift the leg or whatever.
“Their offense was on silent cadence the whole game, which gives us an advantage on defense. Our offense was able to use a verbal cadence where Sam (Darnold) could give all the commands to the center. So it was like playing a home game.”
What about that play call named after a famous rapper?
“There’s some extra sauce to it, but we called it Tupac,” Macdonald said of the play where Derick Hall recorded a strip sack on Patriots quarterback Drake Maye.
Why Tupac?
“The genesis of names is the most difficult thing to explain of all time, but basically it goes back to like 10 years ago we were trying to come up with names for coverages, and rappers’ names obviously came up,” Macdonald said.
“Tupac meant two, and there we go. Some high-level stuff,” he added with a laugh.
Watch the full interview in the video near the top of this post.
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