Mike Macdonald may need to beat NFC West’s best again

Published 9:30 am Wednesday, January 7, 2026

Mike Macdonald has done it.

Now can he do it again?

When Seahawks chair Jody Allen approved general manager John Schneider’s choice of hiring Macdonald to become a first-time head coach and replace fired Pete Carroll in January 2024, the mandate was clear. It was simple.

Beat the 49ers. Beat the Rams.

The Seahawks weren’t getting back to where they wanted to go, where they had been a decade earlier — NFC West champions, the top seed in the postseason, home playoff games in January amid the Seattle chill and rain inside shaking Lumen Field — until they beat San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Niners had beaten Seattle six consecutive times to end the Carroll era. The Rams had beaten Seattle eight times in 11 meetings.

To do it, Macdonald, the defensive coordinator from the Baltimore Ravens, had to fix what was most broken with the Seahawks. That was the defense. Carroll’s ways of a 4-3 scheme with Cover 3 that won a Super Bowl and came 1 yard from winning another with the Legion of Boom were sunk. Seattle bottomed out to 30th in total defense in Carroll’s last season of 2023, 31st against the run.

Two seasons later, Macdonald’s done it.

He’s beaten the 49ers. He’s beaten the Rams. Both must-have wins came inside the last three weeks of the regular season. The Seahawks rallied from 16 points down with 10 minutes left to force overtime, then beat L.A. 38-37 on Sam Darnold’s two-point conversion pass to backup tight end Eric Saubert Dec. 18. Seattle’s domination of the 49ers in Santa Clara, California, Saturday night clinched the Seahawks’ first division title since 2020.

They are the NFC’s top playoff seed for the first time since the 2014 season. They have a bye this week through the wild-card round, to the divisional playoffs. Their next game is likely Saturday, Jan. 17, in the Seattle chill and rain inside shaking Lumen Field. “It’s huge to be able to play in front of the 12s,” said Sam Darnold, the veteran quarterback in his first Seahawks season after seven previous years with four other NFL teams. “It’s unlike any other stadium that I’ve ever played in, in terms of how loud it can be and how tough it could be for another offense to operate.

“So we’re really looking forward to playing at home in the playoffs.”

Macdonald’s done it with multiplicity, versatility and disguises on his attacking defense. He’s done it with his and Schneider’s acumen of drafting (Nick Emmanwori), signing (DeMarcus Lawrence) and trading for (Ernest Jones) the players that perfectly fit the 38-year-old defensive guru’s schemes. The Seahawks allowed the fewest points in the league this season. In two seasons, they’ve gone from 30th to sixth in total defense, and 31st to third in rushing defense.

In two seasons, Macdonald has won 24 games. That’s the franchise’s most victories in consecutive regular seasons since 2013 and ‘14, their last Super Bowl seasons.

Macdonald has won 15 of his 17 road games to begin his head-coaching career. That’s one fewer than George Seifert’s total with the 1989 and ‘90 49ers for the most road wins in the first two years of a coaching career in NFL history. Seattle’s 14 wins for the 2025 season are the most in any regular season in the 50-year history of the franchise.

Macdonald has also nurtured what the most veteran Seahawks, including what Williams and Lawrence say is the tightest brotherhood of men in a locker room they’ve had in the NFL.

“It’s powerful,” Williams, the 11th-year veteran, said.

And it’s not just the winning that’s made this team tight. Williams said that way back in September, when these Seahawks were just getting started winning games.

“We’re here today — number one seed — because of Mike,” Jones, the coach’s middle linebacker and defensive signal-caller, said Saturday night in Santa Clara, moments after the Seahawks’ 13-3 shutdown of San Francisco.

“Not only just the way he calls (the defense), but the community he’s building in that locker room,” Jones said.

The linebacker has been vulnerable with his teammates this season. He shared a personal epiphany of life off the field in the locker room immediately after the team’s shutout win over Minnesota Nov. 30.

“Man, we play for each other,” Jones said, “and we fight for each other.”

On offense, these Seahawks set a franchise record for scoring points this regular season, and finished third in the league in points per game.

They’ve improved on the 10-7 season of 2024, when the offense mostly subverted their strong defense and Seattle missed the playoffs for the second consecutive season.

“I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: We got here and to this point (because) it started last year, man,” Jones said.

“It started through those ups and downs that we had last year. It started then. But we were able to just pick it up this year and keep rolling.”

So now the question to Macdonald for his first playoffs as a head coach is: Can he do it again?

Can he beat the 49ers and the Rams again? This time as the favorite to make next month’s Super Bowl?

See, Macdonald and his Seahawks have beaten but have yet to conquer San Francisco and L.A.

It’s likely Seattle is going to have to beat one or both of its rivals again over the next two rounds of the playoffs to get to Super Bowl 60, Feb. 8, back in Santa Clara. It’s what many on and around the 49ers were talking about in Levi’s Stadium immediately following the Seahawks’ latest win last weekend.

The fifth-seeded Rams (12-5) are favored by 10 1/2 points to beat the NFC South-champion Panthers (8-9) in Charlotte, North Carolina, Saturday in an NFC wild-card game. The sixth-seeded 49ers (12-5) are 4 1/2-point underdogs in their first-round game against the East division champion Eagles (11-6) in Philadelphia.

Seattle will host the lowest remaining seed that survives through wild-card weekend. If the two-seed Bears (11-6) beat the seventh-seeded Green Bay Packers (9-7-1) in Chicago for the second time in three weeks Saturday night, the Seahawks will host the Rams if L.A. wins or the 49ers if they win — or San Francisco if both the Niners and Rams win this weekend. The only way the 49ers or Rams won’t play next week in Seattle is if the Packers beat the Bears — or if Carolina upsets the Rams before the Eagles beat the Niners.

That makes next week potentially more difficult for the Seahawks. But it makes this week easier.

Macdonald, his assistant coaches and analysts are preparing four advance scouting reports and preliminary game plans this bye week. Three of them are easy: They just played the 49ers, Rams and Panthers.

“We’ll spend a good amount of time working on Green Bay,” Macdonald said Monday. “So, however the weekend ends up shaking out, we should feel really great going into (resuming practice next) Monday.”