Little by little, we are getting to know Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald more. Recently we got to hear more about his core philosophy as a coach at Washington’s Be A Pro Coaching Clinic. For one thing, Macdonald says he wants to see “shocking effort” from his players.
What does that mean exactly? Here’s how Macdonald explained it earlier this month, per John Boye at Seahawks.com.
“Well you’ve got to be in great shape, you’ve got to have guys who love each other and want to play for one another—you can’t be selfish. What you’re asking them to do is be incredibly clear, and in order to do that, you have to build confidence. And when you build confidence, guess what happens? They communicate, because they know what the hell they’re doing… We’re talking pre-snap alerts, post-snap alerts, we’re communicating, everybody knows exactly what we’re doing, we’re flying around, we’re leveraging the ball, then you have, and then it starts to look like shocking effort. But it doesn’t just happen overnight.”
Macdonald seems to have had a positive affect on his roster so far – Leonard Williams for one claims the team is locked in on a different level since his arrival. While we expect a modest improvement in 2023, most head coaches don’t see a big leap with their teams until Year 2 in the NFL. If they make the right picks in the draft later this week we could see Seattle emerge as a true contender in 2025.
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