The Seattle Seahawks are heading into the unknown.
Since 1999, the team has been coached almost exclusively by two Hall of Fame caliber legends: Mike Holmgren and Pete Carroll (excepting an ill-advised one-year interlude into the world of Jim Mora that's best forgotten). The level of consistent success and occasional transcendence under these two coaches transformed one of the NFL's most average franchises into a peer with the league's historically excellent teams, like the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers. The question facing the team led by new wunderkind head coach Mike Macdonald is what the hell happens now? What is life as a Seahawks fan without a vaunted father figure at the helm? Is this team still legitimate? Or is a fade back into irrelevance the most likely path?
Before attempting to look forward, let's acknowledge how strangely magical the last decade plus of Seahawks football was. Carroll was a miracle for the whole state of Washington. In 2010, Seattle was coming off one of the most historically tragic runs in sports history: The Sonics had left, the Huskies had gone 0-12, the Mariners were the first team with a $100 million payroll to lose 100 games, and the Seahawks' previous decade of relative success had fallen apart.
Three years later, Carroll was hoisting the Lombardi Trophy, surrounded by multiple legendary players whom he and general manager John Schneider had acquired and developed. Their squad had just destroyed Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos 43-8 in Super Bowl XLVIII with a level of style that remains insane to consider. (Sidenote: I always found it weird that they didn't hold a Super Bowl XLIX. Anyway, moving on...)
Factoring in his success at the college level at USC, Carroll is without a doubt among the most successful football coaches ever.
But by 2023, the miracle run had fully petered out. The Legion of Boom, one of the most intimidating defenses in NFL history, sloughed away superstar by superstar, until all that was left was the ghost of Bobby Wagner. While some of the replacements were fine, the team never really replaced the likes of K.J. Wright, Cliff Avril and Michael Bennett — much less future Hall of Famers Richard Sherman or Wagner. The stats bore this out: The Seahawks were top five in defense by both points and yards allowed from 2012-2016; from 2017-2023 they were never a top 10 unit by either metric.
The offense performed admirably as it transitioned from the Russell Wilson era to Geno Smith era without losing much juice, but the team's Achilles heel throughout the run — the offensive line — was never successfully fortified. The Seahawks were good, but the pathway back to great kept fading further and further into the mist rolling off the Puget Sound. So, somewhat surprisingly given that the team was still pretty OK, Carroll was not-super-willingly transitioned into a retirement role with a relative modicum of grace.
And let's not forget: Carroll is currently 72 years old. Unless you have a job like Walmart greeter or... uhh... U.S. senator, that's almost a decade past retirement age. Dude was old. When he won a Super Bowl back in 2014, he was already, the third-oldest Super Bowl winning head coach in NFL history. It's a full-ass decade later. That there was even the possibility that he had something more to give is a testament to the brand of enthusiastic, optimistic, occasionally delusional, approach football he cultivated.
The interesting part? Pete was let go in exchange for a younger version of himself. The stereotype with NFL teams hiring a new head coach is that they change direction hard with each hire. If a team has an offensive savant whose magic touch went away, they go for a hotshot defensive guru, or vice versa.
New Seahawks head coach Macdonald is not that. I don't think it's a stretch to say that in terms of core football philosophy Macdonald brings the exact same approach to the game that Carroll did: These are two men known for innovative defenses and an obsession with competition. Macdonald was the best "continuity" option among NFL coaching candidates this offseason after a spectacular run as the Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator. And the only way to match Carroll's energy was to bring in someone half his age. With the caveat that even the best seeming NFL hire can go sideways, Macdonald was the right man for this job if the job is viewed as maintaining a high level of Seahawks football.
Also, by the standards of "NFL team where the coach got shitcanned," there's tons to like about the 2024 Seahawks roster. Geno Smith is the rare above-average veteran QB who doesn't eat up a team's whole salary cap. At the key positions of wide receiver, cornerback and defensive line, the Seahawks project to have top five units. There are established impact players in DK Metcalf, Leonard Williams, Kenneth Walker III and Uchenna Nwosu, potential future stars in Devon Witherspoon, Byron Murphy II and Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and stalwart veterans like Tyler Lockett and Jarran Reed around to provide continuity.
This team is good. And based on his work in Baltimore, Macdonald has the scheme and mindset to turn the team's young defensive talent into stars. Everything is set for another grateful transition of power in Seattle (again ignoring the Jim Mora interregnum period, which we must).
All that said, this season will inherently be super weird. This team has had a world-class run of fantastic dads running the show since before I hit puberty. Now I am a dad, and the team's head coach is younger than I am. The 2024 Seahawks will play football with a similar philosophy and new burst of enthusiasm led by their new head coach, but life as a Seahawks fan is different. Whereas Holmgren and Carroll lent their legitimacy to a franchise that had for decades been generic, it's now the Seahawks franchise lending legitimacy to a new whiz kid coach. Like the protagonist in a Miyazaki movie, the Seahawks franchise has learned valuable lessons and is prepared for life without a parental figure at the helm. While it's scary to embark on the unknown, the Seahawks aren't set to fade into the ether. ♦
Spike Friedman formerly wrote about the Seahawks forThe Stranger and was a contributing writer to Grantland.
