Former Seattle Seahawks QB Sees ‘Something Special’ in Mike Macdonald

Of all the first-year head coaches, Mike Macdonald of the Seattle Seahawks sure seems like the one with the most hype surrounding him.

It certainly helps that he’s inheriting a much better roster than most of his peers, but Macdonald has no shortage of merits on his own. He led a Baltimore Ravens defense that was arguably the league’s best last season, and as the NFL’s youngest head coach at 37 years old, he has a long and bright future ahead of him.

A long list of analysts have praised Macdonald over the course of the offseason, and now a familiar face has joined that list. Former NFL quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, who played for Seattle from 2001-10, got the chance to watch the Seahawks’ joint practice with the Tennessee Titans on Thursday and spoke with Macdonald one-on-one for the first time.

“I gave him a couple things that I was impressed with,” Hasselbeck said on Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk. “And he said, ‘We have a lot of work to do.’ Even though the [preseason opener against the] Chargers went pretty well for them in a lot of ways, I think he’s looking for like, ‘Hey, how can we do pregame better? How can we do everything better? How can we do our halftime better?’

“He’s very excited about some of the things that they have (and) he understands where they need to get better.”

With the hiring of Macdonald, the Seahawks became the latest team to jump on the trend of hiring a young head coach with new ideas. The trend began when the Los Angeles Rams hired Sean McVay in 2017, making him the youngest head coach in NFL history at the time. With McVay immediately turning the Rams around, many teams have tried to emulate that success in what is known as the “Sean McVay effect.”

Macdonald may be a defensive-minded coach, contrary to the offensive minds that have taken the league by storm, but he has the potential to match those coaches’ success.

“He reminds me of a young version of a defensive Sean McVay vibe,” Hasselbeck said. “Probably less caffeinated than Sean McVay, but there’s something special there. You definitely can tell that he has it.”