Mike Macdonald talked about the differences between this offseason and his first with the Seahawks, and why the team is ahead of where it was at this time last year.
Mike Macdonald began his Wednesday at the NFL Scouting Combine in a suite at Lucas Oil Stadium as coaches and scouts interviewed draft prospects, listening to them break down film and talk about their game and themselves as people and competitors.
A few hours later, the Seahawks head coach was at a podium to address the media where he talked, in part, about just how different this offseason feels compared to a year earlier when he had just taken the job and did not attend the combine.
The Seahawks return the same defensive staff, led by Macdonald and defensive coordinator Aden Durde, and while the offense will be quite a bit different under new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, the staff Macdonald and Kubiak built are all familiar with Kubiak and the scheme he is running so that group should be in sync when it comes to installing an offense.
"I think we're just ahead of the curve," Macdonald said. "Just fast forward everything to now. We're at the starting point just like, hey, we know what schemes we're running. We know how it's rolled out. I've gone through this on defense where it's, 'OK, hey, we want to play quarters, but how are we rolling it out? What's the footwork? What are all the holes you got to live through,' all those things? That takes time. Everybody, coaches are on the same accord. We lived that a little bit in some of these games we were doing last year on defense. So to be able to kind of, not skip those steps, but understand what the language and how we want to do it on the front end, guys that have done it together, I think it's going to help us.
"It's like, we're not building our schemes right now. Even with our new offensive staff, we know what we're going to run. The guys that we are getting caught up are (the holdovers). We're getting Fris (WRs coach Frisman Jackson) caught up, (tight ends coach Mack Brown), (offensive passing game coordinator) Jake Peetz. Like, those are the guys we got to get (caught up). It's kind of like reverse engineering, almost. The guys that have been here are the ones that actually have to get caught up."
And because Macdonald and other coaches are in Indianapolis and leading the prospect interviews, the front office will have that much better of a feel for what it is that Macdonald and his coaches are looking for when building a roster.
"It's a lot of fun," Macdonald said of the interview process. "We're catching up, from the coaches perspective, so John and the guys have a done a great job of setting it up where our position coaches can kind of drive the interview. It's funny, each interview kind of takes a its own form, and you think 20 minutes probably isn't an optimum time for someone to get to know a player as well as you want, but it's funny how much those personalities come out in that time. So it's been a lot of fun."
When it comes to player acquisition, whether that be players selected in the draft or added in free agency, the Seahawks hope to have a better process this year because Macdonald has had a year on the job and because the coaching staff should be on the same page in a way that just wasn't possible, given the timing, at this time last year. But Macdonald also knows that being better at any process in this sport doesn't mean there isn't an ongoing process of, as he might put it, chasing edges to get better.
"I think you just look at where we're at as a football team, how we're doing everything, my thinking is, we want to be better," he said. "You look at anything we did last year, I'm going to be like, 'Aah Not good enough!' Because we didn't win the Super Bowl. You know, when we do win the Super Bowl, and look back at it, I will be like, 'Aaah, We could be better!' If you don't have that mentality about that, you can't grow from those things, then that's when you're going to get stuck and you're going to get your ass kicked."
With the Seahawks a year into Macdonald's tenure, and with a coaching staff all on the same page, Macdonald noted that "just frees up more time" in the offseason, allowing him and the rest of the staff to be part of the Combine and other pieces of the offseason calendar, such as the Senior Bowl, which Macdonald attended last month.
"It just frees up more time," he said. "It's really, really that simple. We're just further along at this point. (Last year) your head was spinning and trying to get—remember, we didn't bring anybody from Baltimore on defense, so you're doing head coach stuff, and you're building the defensive scheme and teaching everybody everything. It's like, there's a lot. So that took priority over spending a week in Indianapolis."
