Mike Macdonald is attempting to do something unprecedented in his first year as Seattle Seahawks head coach. No first-time NFL head coach hired since 2017 – who is still active as a head coach today – has ever gone into their first season with either an offensive or defensive coordinator who had no prior NFL experience.

The league has taken notice of Seahawks’ lack of home-field advantage

Why 2017? Sure, that seems like an arbitrary data point, and it very well could be – feel free to go back as far as you want to satisfy any lingering curiosity. But it’s important for two reasons. First of all, to be hired as a first-time head coach back then and still be coaching is impressive. Eight years is an eternity in the fickle world of head coaching. Secondly, that hiring cycle produced three of the most successful coaches in the entire league since then: the Los Angeles Rams’ Sean McVay, San Francisco’s Kyle Shanahan, and Buffalo’s Sean McDermott.

The Seahawks are all too familiar with what McVay and Shanahan have done since then, including the Rams’ immediate and meteoric rise under McVay. Shanahan’s tenure began a little slower, but the Seahawks’ roster is in better shape than the 49ers’ was in 2017 and more closely parallels the situation McVay walked into at the start of his career. Because of that Rams success and the comparisons that Mike Macdonald has evoked as a defensive equivalent to the offensively-minded McVay, the path is laid out for what the Seahawks could achieve in the next few seasons.

However, the deviation has occurred in the coordinator decisions, especially on the side of the ball counter to the specialized area of the head coach. For McVay, that was on defense, and he opted to hire then-69-year-old Wade Phillips, who had been coaching in the NFL in some capacity since the Seahawks had existed as a franchise.

The year before Phillips was hired, the Rams’ defense ranked 23rd in points allowed per game. In 2017, that mark improved to 12th in the NFL. The next season, the Rams’ defense held Tom Brady and the Patriots to the fewest points they had ever scored in a Super Bowl. The Los Angeles defense was never a top unit in the league, but it also was never detrimental to the team.

There is a deluge of information and new responsibilities for a first-time head coach to process, in addition to the week-to-week task of actually coaching either the offense or defense. Even that description feels like it minimizes just how much a coach who also functions as a play-caller has to do each week, but it should serve to illustrate the point that the other coordinator has an outsized importance, even to the point of autonomy, on the impact of that entire side of the ball.

It is both a testament to Macdonald’s accolades as a defensive mind while simultaneously an indictment that the Seattle offense, which returned more star power and had fewer holes to fill, has become the biggest liability for the Seahawks. The offensive line has been subpar, but there have been confounding decisions all season that speak to the inexperience of an offensive coordinator (Ryan Grubb) and O-line coach (Scott Huff) who are still acclimating to the myriad of differences between the NFL and college football after jumping to the Seahawks from the UW Huskies.

We’re not going to sit here and litigate every single decision, but what strikes me are the observations from analysts and former NFL players Ray Roberts and Mark Schlereth – who can analyze and explain offensive line play as well as anyone in the NFL – about the general inconsistencies that have plagued the Seahawks’ offense all season, especially on that line.

They have put most of the scrutiny on the play-calling and coaching, and it was particularly insightful on Tuesday when Roberts guest hosted Seattle Sports’ Wyman and Bob. Roberts opened our show by explaining how the Seahawks essentially out-thought themselves with their offensive game plan against the Packers instead of emphasizing their own strengths.

Big Ray Roberts: How Seahawks overthought the plan on offense

Mark Schlereth is a weekly Wyman and Bob guest on Tuesdays, and he has consistently hammered home the message that the coaching on the offensive line and the play-calling has not put the offense in a position to succeed. I highly recommend listening back through his appearances on the show this season for both comedic and football value.

There is an extra layer to this that expedites the urgency for the Seahawks to figure it out on offense. Next season, the following players are entering the final year of their contracts: Geno Smith, DK Metcalf, Kenneth Walker III, Abraham Lucas, Noah Fant and Tyler Lockett. Throw in the rest of the 2022 draft class (outside of Charles Cross) who will need new deals, and it’s going to be prohibitively expensive for the Seahawks to keep all of their key players around. With those pieces currently in place, this team can’t risk another season of questions surrounding the offense.

Oh yeah, so back to those other coordinator hires for the first-time coaches in 2017 besides McVay.

Kyle Shanahan hired a defensive coordinator named Robert Saleh, who had spent the prior 11 seasons coaching in a variety of roles in the NFL. It worked out pretty well for San Francisco.

Sean McDermott opted to go with Rick Dennison, a former offensive coordinator for the Broncos and Texans, as his OC choice. That didn’t work out, with the Bills firing Dennison after that first season. There’ s a lesson to be learned from that as well, because McDermott proceeded to hire Brian Daboll, and the Bills emerged as one of the most prolific offenses and best teams in the NFL in the four seasons Daboll was in Buffalo.

For Mike Macdonald, a wrong coordinator choice isn’t the death knell for a coaching career, but it does require a critical eye and tough conversation this offseason. I have no doubt that Ryan Grubb would be much improved in Year 2. It’s the natural growth and progression that comes in any vocation after doing something for the first time. For the Seahawks, though, time is quickly running out on offense with this current collection of talent. They must ask themselves whether “improved” is good enough to reach the standard for success.

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