‘I Want to Win Super Bowl’: Mike Macdonald Maintains Lofty Expectations For Seahawks
In a matter of four days in early March, the Seattle Seahawks orchestrated a cascade of roster moves heading towards the start of free agency, overhauling the offensive side of the football while adding to their draft ammunition in the process.
First, as an expected cap casualty, the Seahawks waived iconic receiver Tyler Lockett, only for fellow wideout DK Metcalf’s trade request to become public hours after the franchise announced the departure on their official website. Three days later, with negotiations not going anywhere, general manager John Schneider flipped quarterback Geno Smith to the Raiders for a third-round pick, and only two days after that, Metcalf was shipped to the Steelers for a second-round pick.
In the aftermath, Schneider quickly courted quarterback Sam Darnold as Smith’s replacement, handing him a three-year deal worth up to $100.5 million. To help offset the loss of Metcalf and Lockett, he followed up by bringing Yakima native Cooper Kupp back home, signing the ex-Rams star to a three-year contract to pair with rising star Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
Typically, such a domino of moves would coincide with an NFL team kicking off a rebuild, or at least a hard reset. But despite the exodus of Smith, Metcalf, and Lockett, the mission has not changed for Seattle, with coach Mike Macdonald leaning on a lesson he learned early in his coaching career while discussing his unaltered expectations for 2025.
"I want to win the Super Bowl," Macdonald said Tuesday at the NFL Annual Meeting, per Seahawks.com writer John Boyle. "That's the expectation. Every time you step on the field, your expectation is to win. When I was a high school coach, our head coach, Xarvia Smith, got the staff together in the summer and he's like, 'Hey, write down what you think our record is going to be this year.' And guys would turn in like 8-2 or 7-3, 9-1 or whatever. And to those people, he was like, 'What games are we going to lose so we can just go ahead and not play those games?' So if you go into this whole process not expecting to win, you're not doing it the right way."
There isn’t an NFL head coach out there who would say that he isn’t interested in winning the Super Bowl, whether they have the talent in place to actually do so or not. Hoisting the Lombardi Trophy remains the ultimate goal for everyone who straps up a helmet, makes calls from the sideline, or watches from the owner’s suite.
But for those who may question Macdonald’s belief that the Seahawks are still on the upswing following a cataclysmic offseason, there are plenty of reasons to buy what he’s selling. Coming off a 10-win season that resulted in narrowly missing the playoffs, even with Smith, Metcalf, and Lockett now gone, the front office has worked diligently to keep an ascending defensive together this offseason, including re-signing linebacker Ernest Jones IV and defensive tackle Jarran Reed. 10 of the 11 players who ended the 2024 season as starters remain on the roster.
On top of the continuity personnel-wise, Seattle swapped out former starter Dre’Mont Jones for four-time Pro Bowl defensive end Demarcus Lawrence, signing the 12th year veteran to a three-year contract with hopes he can help take an already stellar defensive front to another level. With nearly the entire starting lineup kept intact and Lawrence having prior ties to defensive coordinator Aden Durde from their time together in Dallas, Macdonald hopes to see a defense that ranked in the top five in scoring from Week 10 on last season hit the ground running in September without the hiccups learning a new scheme they endured a year ago.
"I felt like we ended the year with some pretty good momentum, so the expectation is that we can take advantage of that and build on those things. Starting out, you want to be like this the whole time," Macdonald said while motioning his hand upward. "And then just be rocking and rolling come December, January, February… You're going to hit some speedbumps along the way, but make it more seamless in terms of how we grow it, but understanding that there's a lot of expectation on that side and we have a really high standard, so let's go pedal to the metal and make sure we're meeting all those things."
Boasting a top-five caliber defense would go a long way toward the Seahawks returning to the postseason and snapping a two-year hiatus, but the offense will still have to hold up its end of the bargain with no shortage of question marks.
For one, Darnold will be leaving the comforts of Kevin O’Connell’s offense in Minnesota where he benefited from playing behind a quality offensive line and throwing to arguably the best receiver in the NFL in Justin Jefferson, creating natural skepticism about his chances of replicating his career numbers in Seattle. Though he threw a career-high 35 touchdowns and made his first Pro Bowl, trying to hit those numbers again will be near impossible if the Seahawks can’t coax dramatic improvement out of their offensive line to protect him.
Speaking of that offensive line, coordinator Klint Kubiak and a newly-assembled offensive staff will be tasked with getting more out of that unit in the run game as well after finishing 28th in rushing yards in 2024. Without a complementary rushing attack to help support the quarterback and keep opposing defenses honest, it will likely be tough sledding for Darnold regardless of scheming, especially without Metcalf and Lockett on the outside, setting the team up for similar trouble to last season when Smith found himself under constant siege and Ken Walker III couldn’t get untracked without blocking in front of him.
But while those concerns may have validity, Macdonald and Schneider share optimism that a new-look coaching staff will be able to smoothly implement their system and get more out of Seattle’s talent from quarterback to the skill positions to the offensive line due to familiarity and experience, as Kubiak has previously worked with line coach John Benton, run game coordinator Rick Dennison, running back coach Kennedy Polamalu, and run game specialist Justin Outten with other organizations. Those four coaches have nearly 80 years of combined NFL experience between them and are fluent in the same football verbiage, a huge difference from a year ago with first-year coordinator Ryan Grubb and first-year line coach Scott Huff.
"It's a little bit unique because of how many guys we've hired that have worked together, so I don't think it's a normal operation when you get a staff together, like we had last year on both sides of the ball," Macdonald explained. "A lot of these guys have worked together, they speak the same language, it's been a really fun process. Shoot, I'm the one that's trying to learn and get the language down and things like that. It feels like we work well together, there's no ego in that room, a lot of great projects going on. It's exciting."
In regard to Darnold, the organization has great confidence in him elevating his game paired with Kubiak, who helped Kirk Cousins throw 33 touchdowns and just seven picks in 2021 as a coordinator in Minnesota and had moderate success with Derek Carr in New Orleans last season before injuries struck. Though his system isn’t identical to the one O’Connell deploys for the Vikings, there will certainly be carry over with both coaches heralding from the Shanahan coaching tree, including similar route concepts and attention to a timing-based passing game to help get the ball to Smith-Njigba, Kupp, tight end Noah Fant, and other playmakers.
Based on past precedent, getting more out of Walker, Zach Charbonnet, and Kenny McIntosh in Kubiak’s wide zone-centric offense should also be plausible, assuming Benton and Dennison can work their magic once again with a young offensive line headlined by former top-10 pick Charles Cross, fourth-year tackle Abraham Lucas, and second-year guard Christian Haynes. Coaching alongside Kubiak’s father in Houston, Benton engineered three consecutive top-10 ground attacks, while Dennison left an imprint on Denver’s dynamic rushing attacks in the 2000s working under Mike Shanahan and coordinated the offense with Benton in Houston under Gary Kubiak.
What may inspire the most faith from Macdonald and Schneider, however, is the fact that the Seahawks have 10 draft picks at their disposal to continue replenishing the offense with young talent both at the skill positions and in the trenches. Armed with five picks in the first 92, including the second and third rounders acquired for Metcalf and Smith, they have the ammunition to be able to acquire immediate difference makers at receiver, guard, center, and/or tight end, which would hasten the process of reloading the unit and in turn put Darnold in a better position to thrive out of the gate.
Unlike a year ago when he was working overtime trying to build his first staff and wasn’t as hands on as he wanted to be with the draft evaluation process, Macdonald has been able to attend events such as the Senior Bowl and the NFL combine this spring with assistants in tow, diving headfirst into the efforts to build the tough-minded, championship-caliber roster he envisions. As a result, Schneider and the player personnel department should be better equipped to acquire the players desired by the coaching staff to climb back into contention quickly without taking a step backward first.
"I think it just mirrors everything else in our program. We have a baseline what we're doing; I have spent more time on the draft, our coaches have. If you think about where we were last year, a bunch of new guys in a room, like 'All right, hey, what are we going to do, how are we going to do it?' That takes a lot of time, a lot of conversation. We've worked through that, we're kind of past that point right now, so we're spending a lot of time on the draft."
