SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The strategy was ironic.
To outwit the New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald tapped into one of his core personality traits.
Seahawks colleagues describe the second-year, 38-year-old defensive guru as an analytical thinker for whom “Excel is his best friend.”
Advertisement
Players and coaches know that when they talk to Macdonald, he may not respond immediately. He is not ignoring them. He is calculating his response.
“He usually has the look where he would literally pause, look off, and it’s like the most awkward five seconds of your life,” defensive backs coach and passing game coordinator Karl Scott told Yahoo Sports on Thursday. “It’s him getting to where he needs to get to give you the answer that he feels best about.
“His processor is working up there.”
The calculating and recalculating is effective for the creation of a game plan.
It’s lethal for a quarterback playing on the biggest stage.
Advertisement
So as the Seahawks prepared to face second-year quarterback Drake Maye and the Patriots, a defense that prides itself on running myriad plays out of identical pre-snap looks understood: Seattle needed the opposing quarterback to do what its coach so often does in conversation.
The Seahawks needed Maye to pause, to hesitate, to wonder what the Seahawks were going to do after the snap. Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels had drilled film that showed Seattle employing late rotations and drops that confounded quarterbacks who trusted their initial read.
The Seahawks kept the heat on Drake Maye throughout Super Bowl LX in a resounding defensive performance. (Photo by Matthew Huang/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
McDaniels told Maye: “You gotta confirm it once the ball’s snapped.”
Advertisement
But waiting to confirm the Seahawks’ defensive plan left Maye exactly where the Seahawks wanted him.
“Once he [gets] on point, he get[s] the ball out very early, it’s very hard to stop him,” cornerback Devon Witherspoon said as cigar smoke and Champagne bottles signaled the Seahawks’ 29-13 Super Bowl LX victory. “So I think we had a great game plan for that. …
“Just make him hold the ball a little bit longer than he normally do.”
Make Maye pause just as Macdonald regularly does in conversation. Better yet, force that hesitation and then attack a quarterback who’s no longer in rhythm.
In an NFL era that increasingly favors high-flying offenses and quarterback-centric team builds, the Seahawks won their first Super Bowl in 11 years by bucking trends. When they needed a head coach, they hired not the latest Los Angeles Rams offensive mind whom they tabbed as the next Sean McVay but instead a defensive mind whom past colleagues have long hailed as a defensive Sean McVay of sorts.
Advertisement
When the Seahawks needed a quarterback, they did not draft one with a premium pick nor pay top dollar to acquire the most proven option; they instead bet on 2018 No. 3 overall pick Sam Darnold’s potential to do enough among a highly talented surrounding cast and instructed Darnold in the final game: Protect the ball, and we’ll win. Sunday, Darnold became the first quarterback to start for at least four teams (he’s started for five) then win a Super Bowl.
The Seahawks won with a head coach whom colleagues say coach defense like offensive coaches coach offense, which is to say that Seattle’s defense doesn’t bank on reacting when it could instead detail out plays with specific roles for each player and an unusual emphasis on situational football, disguises and blitzes that could come from anywhere.
That combination buoyed Seattle to a win that was closer than the final result suggested. And it could leave many of the 31 other NFL teams wondering if their recent offensive obsession is the straightest path to a Super Bowl.
Advertisement
“We lost and we were beat,” Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel said. “Outcoached and outplayed.
“Give them credit.”
With heavy pressure, Seahawks knocked Maye off Super Bowl mountain
During offseason practices and training camp last summer, McDaniels drew a picture of a mountain on the board of a meeting room and explained his quarterback philosophy.
Many NFL offenses, including the increasingly popular Shanahan-McVay system, are trending toward alleviating responsibilities and stressors off of quarterbacks. McDaniels, whose six Super Bowls as offensive coordinator are a league record, believed in the opposite. The more he teaches quarterbacks every intricate detail, the more they can process the information that defenses threw at them, he figures. Even without grizzled vet Tom Brady under center, McDaniels clings to that premise.
Advertisement
So last summer, alongside the edge of the mountain imagery, McDaniels spelled out lessons in ascending order of difficulty. Cadence formed the base of the mountain, followed by breaking the huddle, alignment, footwork and progression reads, Patriots second-string quarterback Josh Dobbs told Yahoo Sports. Then came concepts ranging from red zone and short-yardage to third-and-long and end-of-game situations.
“And then at the top of the mountain, there’s all these difficult things that defenses do, you know, to try to make you make mistakes,” McDaniels said Thursday. “It’s not easy all the time going up the mountain cause you’re gonna be asked to do some of these things and they’re gonna trick us and they’re gonna get us.
“But once you learn, and then you get to the top of the mountain? I’ve always told them that the view from the top is a lot better than the view from the bottom.”
Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels failed to outwit Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald and his stellar defensive unit on Super Bowl Sunday. (Photo by Kathryn Riley/Getty Images)
(Kathryn Riley via Getty Images)
McDaniels’ philosophy helped guide Maye to a league-best 72% completion rate, the MVP runner-up by one vote and an AFC championship title. But on the biggest stage, the Seahawks concepts at the top of the proverbial mountain thwarted rather than empowered Maye.
Advertisement
Seattle, rather than New England, hoisted the Lombardi Trophy atop the pro football mountain.
Maye wasn’t able to carry an offense that relied heavily on him to elevate the Patriots most of the season. Maye was pressured on 52.8% of his dropbacks, the most since Next Gen Stats began tracking such data, and he absorbed six sacks while turning the ball over three times on the night.
Through three quarters, Maye had completed just eight of 18 pass attempts for 60 yards as the Patriots converted just two-of-11 third downs before the final period.
Late in the game, the Patriots found the end zone in what some Seahawks later described as garbage time. But before the Patriots ruined Seattle’s shutout bid with 12:30 to play, New England punted eight times and fumbled another possession away.
Advertisement
The Seahawks’ blitzes were one source of Maye’s disorientation.
Seattle’s designated blitzer was unexpected.
With Devon Witherspoon, Seahawks bucked their playoff blitz pattern
Remember how Macdonald coaches defense like his rivals coach offense?
Well, Seattle’s top mind schemed cornerback Devon Witherspoon the way San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan schemes Christian McCaffrey and Atlanta Falcons brass scheme Bijan Robinson.
Witherspoon, the fifth overall pick of the 2023 NFL Draft, had rushed the passer just 21 times in 12 regular-season games this season. He had not rushed the passer, which is to say the defensive back had not blitzed, in either of the Seahawks’ prior playoff games.
Advertisement
So what did “Defensive Sean McVay” dial up against a quarterback who had fumbled more times in three playoffs games than 17 regular-season games?
Witherspoon blitzed six times, generating a career-high four pressures including a sack that encapsulates why Maye had such a long and frustrating night.
As the Patriots faced third-and-9 with 7:23 to play in the first quarter, Seattle lined up not four, not five but six defenders at the line of scrimmage. Then, as New England snapped the ball, linebacker Ernest Jones IV dropped into coverage and Witherspoon creeped up from behind the line to blitz Darnold.
Witherspoon sacked Darnold for a loss of 10 yards and the first of what would become a very routine Patriots play on Sunday: a punt. The Patriots were so unprepared for Witherspoon’s blitz that he managed to race through unblocked. Witherspoon was unblocked on all four of his pressures, according to Next Gen Stats.
“I haven’t been blitzing a lot this year but like I said, it was best for our team,” Witherspoon said. “I enjoy them a lot.”
Advertisement
The Patriots would not enjoy them.
Instead, in the fourth quarter, Witherspoon’s pursuit would cause a play in which he did not show up on the stat sheet or even the description of the play in the NFL’s official record of how the game unfolded.
And yet, the play was “just a microcosm of our whole season,” Scott said, because Seattle’s defense hinged less on one star than the average NFL defense and instead on a swarming collective that set each other up for home-run plays. With 4:37 to play in the fourth quarter, after the Patriots had finally found a glimpse of momentum including their initial score, Witherspoon waited for the tell that Macdonald had outlined during film study and indeed saw the timing of an offensive line movement that gave him a green light. Witherspoon burst through the line again and punched it out of Maye’s hands.
Seahawks linebacker Uchenna Nwosu grabbed the loose ball before it hit the ground and returned it 45 yards for a touchdown. The Patriots were mathematically a long shot to rally before that. With the 14-point swing on the drive, Seattle’s win clarified further.
“Spoon had a phenomenal game,” Macdonald said. “Affected the quarterback, made the play on the ball. We haven’t blitzed him that much this year. He hasn’t made that many plays on the quarterback. Not for a lack of wanting to on his end.
Advertisement
“Called his number today and made it happen.”
‘Illusion of complexity’ gave Seahawks a trophy that is no mirage
From the Santa Clara Marriott in the days preceding Super Bowl LX, Macdonald told his team in a meeting that their best recipe for winning was to be themselves.
Perhaps the message will sound cliché to some; and perhaps it will convey stability and consistency to others. But Macdonald wasn’t just floating vague sentiments. He was explaining to his players how he tempered his own nerves ahead of the biggest moment, during a week in which he said too much time was one of his biggest challenges.
Advertisement
The analytical, spreadsheet-loving mind had too much time to crunch numbers. The calculating, scheming defensive mastermind was still installing wrinkles on Saturday, Love said.
“Lot of thought, lot of effort, lot of adjustments,” Love said. “It always goes up to the whistle because we’re just chasing that edge.”
So Macdonald’s message to his players in their team meeting, after a season of defining their ethos as “loose and focused”?
“He’s like, ‘I go through the game plan every week and I get to Friday and start stressing and stuff,’” edge rusher DeMarcus Lawrence told Yahoo Sports. “He’s like, ‘Next thing you know, I see you guys and it’s like all of [the stress] is thrown away. Just because of y’all’s attitudes and you know how y’all approach each and every day.’
Advertisement
“He told us the key was being ourselves.”
So on Sunday, in sunny Northern California, the Seahawks leaned into their identity of disguises and they ran zone at times after they aligned pre-snap bluffing they would run man. The Seahawks painted pictures for Maye other than the truth of what they would run, and they married their rush and their coverage to create pressure he was unable to overcome.
“We use disguise and shell coverage to play everything out of and create that illusion of complexity,” defensive coordinator Aden Durde told Yahoo Sports on Thursday. “I’ve been on teams that you want to disguise, but I feel like teams I’ve been on, they want to disguise multiple different looks, where here it’s just like, ‘This is what we are.’
Advertisement
“We don’t pressure a lot, but when we do pressure, everyone pressures, and if everyone pressures that means everyone drops. So it’s all connected on all three levels.”
On Sunday, the blitzes and pressures and disguises all connected to light the way to a Seahawks championship.
“They had a hard time operating,” Seahawks general manager John Schneider said of the Patriots. “[Macdonald] worries himself overthinking and overstrategizing, but he’s amazing at it. And he knows football. He knows the offensive side and the defensive side.
“He did a great job and he did a great job of being himself. And when players see that authenticity, they buy into that right away. They can recognize a fake right away, and he’s not fake at all.”
Neither, on the floor of the home locker room at 9:25 p.m. local time, was the Lombardi Trophy. Fingerprints dulled its luster some. But the trophy that Seahawks players and coaches had lifted and posed with and danced around and kissed sat abandoned on the carpet of the locker room as its new owners fled for the party that awaited.
Advertisement
Perhaps it was fitting: The trophy that had shuffled hands and stages all night now reflected the image of the head coach who won it, taking a pause that was not awkward before more action awaited it later that night.
The trophy that Macdonald had earned in large part because of his calculating pauses, and those pauses’ ability to make Maye pause, could breathe.
So could a locker room of Seahawks players with different faces and backstories than the last Seattle dynasty. Schneider discussed, as one of the few holdovers, how difficult it was to again reach the elusive stage and how much he appreciated team owner Jody Allen’s willingness to grant a front office a caliber of longevity the league often doesn’t when a decade passed between Lombardis.
Advertisement
Witherspoon celebrated the championship reputation his coach had earned, albeit with a dose of shade toward the NFL Coach of the Year contest that had crowned Vrabel, rather than Macdonald, its winner. (Ballots incorporate only regular-season performances.)
“It was just so easy to follow his game plan because you know he wanted the best for you,” Witherspoon said of Macdonald. “I mean, he means everything to me. And [when] he didn’t get Coach of the Year, I felt some time of way about that because I mean, who outperformed him this year, really?
“We etched ourselves in history, so it really don’t matter 1770635141 to be honest, though.
“But talking about a coach who [is] going to battle for you, who [is] going to treat you right, man, who’s a player’s coach — it’s hard to put these words in. It’s hard to put it together in the words, man.
Advertisement
“I just love Coach Macdonald. That’s my guy, man.”
Pause to think about it, and that’s a Super Bowl champion.