Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald has belief in his team, but also knows it’s on him and the coaching staff to get things back on track.
A football season is rarely a linear journey, and that's particularly true for a team with an all-new coaching staff, but that doesn't make the losses hurt any less.
So far this season, which isn't even halfway over yet, the Seahawks have experienced the highs of the three-game winning streak, the lows of a three-game losing streak, and following that six-game stretch, they had arguably their best and worst performances in back-to-back games, first beating the NFC South-leading Falcons by 20 in Atlanta, then losing by 21 points at home to the Bills on Sunday.
"When you see growth in your football team, it's extremely exciting," Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said. "In order to do that, you've got to put the work in. You just got to grind it out and you've got to attack it. That's what makes games like yesterday really frustrating, because you feel the growth. You feel like we're taking some steps in the right direction, and then you kind of get punched in the mouth. How are you going to respond to that? It doesn't mean this is the end of the journey, it just means 'Hey, this is something that we have to go through as a football team to get to that next level.' It's never the road that you expect, but it is going to keep going up."
And coming off a rough loss, Macdonald and the rest of the coaching staff will be tasked this week with getting the team back on track heading into a Week 9 game against the Rams, taking lessons from Sunday's loss and applying them to this week while also not letting the disappointment of that performance hang over the team.
"It's an easy trap to just get down in the dumps, but we've got to stay on the roller coaster," Macdonald said. "It's an up-an-down season, It's a long season. There are a lot of things that we can build off of. I think the players feel that we got the right guys for the job. We've just got to make it come to life on a consistent basis. I think it starts with me, starts with the rest of the coaches, our leaders, seeing the things that we're doing well, and let's just go attack it with great enthusiasm.
"There's belief, there is belief and faith in the men that sit in this room, and in all of our coaches. We're going to attack the heck out of this week and we're going to have a great week and be ready to play the Rams."
To win this week, and to continue winning, the Seahawks know what needs to improve. They need to run the ball better and stop the run; they need to get back on the positive side of turnover differential; and they need to clean up the self-inflicted wounds that have come up in losses, most notably the red-zone miscues that cost them so dearly on Sunday. But one positive in all of that is that, with so much room to improve, the Seahawks still find themselves right in the thick of the NFC West race, with Seattle, San Francisco and Arizona all sitting at 4-4, while the Rams are just behind them at 3-4.
Macdonald mentioned that after the game, and can remind his players of it this week, "to give you the reality of the situation. Everyone wants to be 8-0 at this point, and I don't believe anybody is. But, we're right there. You kind of look at it as it's kind of the first game of the season here. Second half of the season, an opportunity going into the bye (week) to feel optimistic and positive about where we're at. There's a lot of good things going on out there. I thought the team played hard. We're just not connecting right now, and so we'll get it to connect. That's the idea."
And Macdonald knows that part of getting back on track is finding a way to be more dominant at home after a third straight loss at Lumen Field that featured a pretty solid contingent of Bills fans.
"It's disappointing, obviously, being at home, being 2-3 at home for the year, it's disappointing where we're at," he said. "We definitely expect better."
As for keeping opposing fans away, Macdonald said, "We have to win. We've got to win, period. Opposing fans won't want to show up if we're consistently kicking butt and doing what we're supposed to do. Our fans our doing a great job, and they're sticking with us all the way through the end of the game. We're fighting, and they're fighting with us, and we have to do a better job of putting a product out there that they want to root really hard for."
