SAN FRANCISCO — Leslie Frazier had a suggestion for Mike Macdonald: At some point, the Seattle Seahawks’ head coach should hand over play-calling responsibilities to someone else.
Frazier’s reasoning was twofold: For one, balancing defensive play calling and managing the whole team is taxing. Secondly, when was the last time someone won the Super Bowl doing both?
“I just hadn’t really seen it done that I could recall,” the 66-year-old Frazier, Seattle’s assistant head coach, recalled Monday at Super Bowl media night.
There’s a reason for that: It has never happened.
On Sunday against the New England Patriots, Macdonald can become the first head coach to serve as the primary defensive play caller for a Super Bowl champion, based on The Athletic’s research.
Defensive-minded head coaches have won only 10 of the last 30 championships, and none since 2018. Bill Belichick accounts for six of those titles. Macdonald’s predecessor, Pete Carroll, the only Super Bowl champion coach in franchise history, has one of the other four.
A defensive-minded head coach is guaranteed to join that list Sunday, as the Patriots are coached by Mike Vrabel, a former linebacker and one-time defensive coordinator. But Vrabel is not New England’s play caller. If Macdonald adds his name while also calling the plays, it would be one of the greatest feats of the modern era.
Macdonald, in his second year with Seattle, said Monday he was aware of the history he’d be making but added that all he cares about is winning a championship. Asked whether he’d consider having someone else call plays in the future, Macdonald said: “We want to operate with what’s going to give us the best chance to win. If it’s me calling plays, let’s do it. If it’s me not calling plays, let’s do it.”
The Seahawks had the NFL’s No. 1 scoring defense for the first time since the Legion of Boom accomplished that feat four years in a row from 2012 to 2015. This season was Macdonald’s fourth as an NFL play caller, and the 38-year-old has already coordinated the scoring champ twice, with two different franchises (he also did it in 2023 with the Baltimore Ravens).
Seattle’s players and coaches feel Macdonald’s play calling is one of the reasons they’re playing on Super Bowl Sunday. The players take the field every week believing they have an edge on their opponent because of Macdonald, widely regarded as a “defensive mastermind.”
“He’s incredibly sharp, he’s young, he’s innovative,” safety Julian Love said. “Old-school principles, new-school methods; he lives that in terms of how he calls the defense. The scheme has been the scheme forever, but he finds ways to tweak it and to make it his own. How he deploys the scheme is what makes him special.
“From the jump, we’ve been believers in just how he calls the game. He’s second to none, in my mind.”
Macdonald doesn’t just design good plays for the concepts that players see on Sundays. He and his assistant coaches spend time making sure players understand why plays are called, where they are potentially vulnerable based on their defensive structure and how offenses will attack them depending on field position, down and distance.
Those explanations, linebacker Ernest Jones IV believes, are the “biggest reason” Seattle’s defense has taken the next step after finishing fifth in points allowed per drive in 2024.
“He really breaks it down in terms of, ‘This is why we’re calling it; these are the looks that we are expecting,’” safety Ty Okada said. “They help explain the integrity of the call and why we are calling it, not just, ‘Hey, this is the job that you have on X, Y and Z play.’ When you can dive into that type of detail, and you get to understand the why behind things, as a player, it really helps you understand and be able to put yourself in the best position.”
The Seahawks’ defense is defined by the selflessness of the players. Few have dominant statistics. Still, the unit had three second-team All-Pros: defensive tackle Leonard Williams, cornerback Devon Witherspoon and Jones. Their film was more eye-opening than the raw numbers. The same is true for most of the defense.
To have a successful defense built this way, Macdonald needed players to buy in to the idea of doing their individual roles at the highest level, even if that meant setting up someone else to make a play. They bought in because they understood how exactly their jobs fit within the larger framework of each call and, ultimately, the entire defense.
“Whenever you have a play caller like him,” cornerback Riq Woolen said, “it makes the job a lot easier.”
Early in his postgame speech after defeating the Arizona Cardinals in Week 14 of last season, Macdonald told his team, “I freakin’ screwed up the first drive. Offense, great job coming back; defense, staying resilient.”
Macdonald’s willingness to hold himself accountable is another aspect of his play calling that players love. Most of the time, he has them in the correct call against whatever the offense is running. When he doesn’t, he’s quick to acknowledge he put the defense in a bad spot.
“That’s big time,” said Jones, who relays Macdonald’s calls in the defensive huddle. “It’s good when your coach is able to take the blame whenever, because a lot of times it’s on the players. That’s just what he does; that’s just who he is. We love that from Coach.”
Outside of Seattle’s building, Macdonald is perceived as the guy with all the answers. He knows that couldn’t be further from the truth. His job is to equip players with the tools to outperform the opposition, but sometimes he falls short. When Seattle gave up 38 points in a loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 5, Macdonald blamed himself for overloading the defensive game plan. The next week, he shrank the menu, and a short-handed Seattle defense defeated the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The Seahawks gave up 37 points to the Los Angeles Rams in Week 16. Macdonald said because the defense had been playing so well to that point, he figured they could progress to the next stages of the scheme and add more to their plate. In hindsight, Macdonald said, that shouldn’t have been the thought, particularly in a Thursday night game.
On the first drive in that Arizona game, Macdonald incorrectly tried to anticipate one of the Cardinals’ tendencies, put one of his defensive backs in a tough spot on third down and then did the same on a 41-yard touchdown scored by receiver Michael Wilson against safety Coby Bryant’s one-on-one coverage. Players always feel like they should make the plays that come to them, but there’s a confidence boost that comes with knowing the coach has their back.
Arizona’s next drive ended with Jones intercepting quarterback Kyler Murray. On the next series, Bryant recorded an interception. Macdonald made a mistake. His players made it right.
“If you’re full of crap and you’re blaming the players on every play, they’re going to know,” Macdonald said. “We don’t want to live like that.”
Devon Witherspoon’s ability to challenge the guy known as a defensive mastermind is one of the reasons teammates believe he is Macdonald’s favorite player.
“They’re completely different people,” Williams said. “Spoon, sometimes I can barely understand him (because of his southern accent). Then Mike is just kind of like the straight-A student type of guy. I bet in school it’d be hard for them to cross paths, but here, they’re best friends.”
Macdonald’s willingness to consider Witherspoon’s input — while also taking opinions from other players — is another aspect of his play calling that the Seahawks say makes their coach unique.
Macdonald had an underwhelming football career in high school and never played in college. Having that blind spot makes him open to suggestions. He knows what he doesn’t know. His players feel comfortable approaching him with concerns about a certain call or coverage or a thought about whether they have too much on their plate for that week’s game. They can also share their ideas, knowing there’s a chance they will be put into the plan.
“When guys come up with their own ideas and stand on the table and (say), ‘This is what I believe in,’ one, you know they’re paying attention to it. They’re invested in it,” defensive backs coach Karl Scott said. “Two, (there’s) ownership of, ‘I’m gonna make it come to life because this is my idea. This is what I want.’ Guys take ownership in what they do, and you can see the results.”
Most of the roster needed time to develop that relationship with the head coach. For Witherspoon — who once flat-out told Macdonald a concept they were installing in the offseason wasn’t going to work — it came naturally. Witherspoon leading that charge is fitting because the third-year cornerback’s energy fuels the team. He is the soul of the Seahawks’ defense. Macdonald feeds off that energy, too, applying it to make the defense the best it can be.
“Spoon, he doesn’t hold anything back when he comes to talk to Mike,” Love said. “Sometimes you tiptoe around the head coach — Spoon does not. From the jump, he hasn’t. It’s built such a brotherly love and bond between those two. There’s just such a love there. Just raw love for the game.”
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