So, as Mike Macdonald and the rest of the team work to build out the front office and prepare to assemble the 2026 version of the Seahawks that will defend the title of Super Bowl champion it brings about the first time Mike Macdonald will be in charge of an NFL defense for a third straight season.<\/p>\n
Not dissimilarly, in his first year leading the defense of the Baltimore Ravens in 2022, Macdonald\u2019s group finished third in the league in points allowed per game before improving to the top overall spot in 2023.<\/p>\n
Which means that in every single season in which Macdonald has been responsible for a defense and the majority of the players in the system have been in the system for more than a season, that defensive unit has finished as the top performing group in the NFL. Of course, a sample size of two is not large, but the reality is that even with such a small sample the ability to turn two defenses around in a span of two seasons with new players and new coaches is a remarkable feat and demonstrates the strength of Macdonald\u2019s defense.<\/p>\n
And that strength is something that Kirk Cousins found surprising when the Atlanta Falcons faced the Seahawks during the 2025 season, as he recently explained in an appearance on the Friends From Work podcast.<\/p>\n
For those who don\u2019t want to watch the clip, or for whom the clip will not play for whatever reason, Cousins explains that one of the things that makes Macdonald\u2019s defense unique is the timing of the post-snap coverage changes. Cousins explains that many defenses will show a two-high shell pre-snap, and then rotate into a single high safety alignment immediately post-snap, requiring the quarterback and other offensive players to adjust to the coverage change.<\/p>\n
However, the big wrinkle that Macdonald adds is that the Seattle defense will similarly rotate from a two-high shell into a single high safety after the snap, but with a twist. Specifically, Cousins explains that instead of the safeties rotating immediately after the snap, they stay in place initially, rotating to a single high alignment after a second. This means that the coverage changes mid-play as the quarterback is processing through his progressions, and that when making the first and second reads the coverage and prescribed reaction for the quarterback is different than when he has progressed to his third read, because over the course of completing the reads the coverage the secondary is presenting has changed completely.<\/p>\n
This is obviously just one part of the defensive genius that make Macdonald\u2019s defense so difficult on opposing quarterbacks, but it is fascinating to see a 14- year veteran with 167 career regular season starts at quarterback explain that Macdonald\u2019s system forced him to rethink how he thinks about playing quarterback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So, as Mike Macdonald and the rest of the team work to build out the front office and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,6,52201],"class_list":{"0":"post-768589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-nfl","10":"tag-seattle-seahawks-analysis-and-opinion"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116113548075244330","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}