How good a defensive coach is Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald? He took a unit that had underperformed for a few years and turned it into a top-10 unit last season. In the second half of 2024, Seattle's D was arguably a top-5 group.
But Macdonald doesn't do it with vanilla schemes; they might just look vanilla to opposing quarterbacks. Instead, the coach disguises his alignments, and where a player is before the snap might not be where he is when the quarterback gets the ball. That means a QB is guessing a lot against the Seahawks.
This is especially true in the types of blitzes that Macdonald uses. He has a wide variety of them, both for stopping the run and putting pressure on quarterbacks, and nearly any player can be sent. The coach has been successful for too long in the NFL to be simply lucky; he knows football.
Seattle Seahawks fans should see a lot of blitzes from Mike Macdonald's defense
So does San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan. The 49ers and Seahawks start the season against one another in an NFC West showdown. Shanahan is a creative play-caller, but he doesn't use max protection, and he loves to call hot reads.
That creates pressure on opposing defenses because one can never be too sure where the ball is going to go. He is also smart enough to show the same play a few times, but then runs it a fourth time in a slightly different way that turns into an explosive play.
The problem for Shanahan comes when he faces a defensive coach with creative blitzes because, without max protection, 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy is getting heat from places he doesn't expect. This might not turn directly into turnovers, but it can turn into important third-down incompletions.
In Week 1, Mike Macdonald should blitz a lot. Some national pundits might think that Macdonald mostly blitzes on third downs, but this is a fallacy. His early-down blitzes can be just as detrimental to an offense. It is the variety and creativity that matter.
Kyle Shanahan was asked this week about Macdonald as a play-caller, and the coach said, "To me, it's how he runs his whole scheme. They have the threat of everything. It's a sound defense in how it starts out...Does a good job calling his blitzes; he times them out right, does good ones to stop the run, good ones to stop the pass, and he has a Rolodex of coverages..."
Shanahan isn't dumb, of course. He has generated lots of good teams with the 49ers. The coach will have a plan about how to attack the Seattle Seahawks' defense. But Mike Macdonald knows this, too, and his defenses tend to be better in year two of his scheme. Seattle might dominate San Francisco in Week 1, and get ready for a lot of blitzes.