Matt Calkins: How Seahawks are proving coach Mike Macdonald wrong each week

Matt Calkins, The Seattle Times on Dec 9, 2025

Published in Football

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ATLANTA — Every week it seems Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald emphasizes just how difficult it is to take down an NFL opponent.

Every week he highlights how hard it is to secure a win in the world's top football league.

And yet, just about every week, his team makes racking up said victories look as easy as a summer snooze. This is what happens when you're a legitimate Super Bowl contender. The difficult has become routine.

A good team might have let a foe such as the Atlanta Falcons (4-9) cause them 60 minutes of anxiety. A great team disposed of them as if it was the varsity scrimmaging the freshmen.

Sure, the offense dragged in the first half of the Seahawks' 37-9 win on Sunday, but the end result seemed borderline inevitable.

One can certainly point out that the quality of Seattle's last few opponents has been sorely lacking. It beat a cellar dweller of a Titans team in the middle of last month before slamming two opponents missing their starting quarterbacks. But that doesn't change the fact that the Seahawks (10-3) are cruising like a squad whose season may very well extend into February. There hasn't been anything remotely frightening for Seattle in weeks — just a team that's frighteningly good.

You can feel how everyone's bought in and how everybody believes that we can win," said Seahawks receiver Rashid Shaheed. "It's a great feeling. I felt that Day 1 in the locker room. Vibes are high."

On the first play of the second half Sunday, Shaheed returned a kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown that put his team up 13-6. It had been a relatively uneventful afternoon for the offense before that play. It got eventful in a hurry.

Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold finished the day with 249 yards and three touchdowns on 20-of-30 passing. He recovered from a short-field interception in the first half and ended up with a 111.7 passer rating. Seven of his throws went to Jaxon Smith-Njigba, the NFL's leading receiver who tallied 92 yards and two touchdowns in Atlanta. But despite Seattle's 37 points — their third-highest total of the year — the afternoon belonged to the defense.

When Seahawks general manager John Schneider hired Macdonald before the 2024 season, he likely envisioned this version of the Seahawks. Mike was the mastermind behind a Ravens defense that allowed fewer points than any team in the NFL in 2023.

The "D" was once the hallmark of the Seahawks' organization, but it dropped off considerably in Pete Carroll's final three years at the helm. It's back — and as Seahawks rookie safety Nick Emmanwori suggested, possibly "historic."

Emmanwori had the best game of his young career on Sunday, logging an interception, a sack and a blocked field goal. Cornerback Devon Witherspoon added a pick of his own and recovered a fumble forced by defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence. Again, it's the Falcons — a 4-9 team that lost starting quarterback Michael Penix Jr. to an ACL tear last month. But they still had veteran Kirk Cousins lining up behind center, and he couldn't move the ball on Atlanta's touchdown-free Sunday.

It's a nice thing for an offense that scored just six points in the first half to have a defense it can rely on. It's gotta be fun for fans to see a group that's second in the NFL in points allowed at 17.4 per game. There was the shutout against the Vikings last week. There was Sunday's single-digit performance. There was the 20-12 win over a 9-4 Jacksonville team in October, too.

Said Smith-Njigba after the game: "We have the best defense in the world.

They've also had some relatively good luck. It just so happened that Seattle met Minnesota while starting quarterback J.J. McCarthy was hurt. It just so happened that they met the Falcons after Penix went down. And next week they will have the Colts (8-5) after starting quarterback Daniel Jones injured his Achilles tendon Sunday. It doesn't seem to matter, though. The Seahawks aren't squeaking by these injury-riddled opponents — they're flat-out embarrassing them.

How this all plays out in the end is anybody's guess. The NFL is about as unpredictable a league as there is. There will be truer tests of the Seahawks' ability in their rematches with the Rams and 49ers, who each beat them in their first meetings.

But right now, they look as capable as any team in the NFL. It wouldn't be reckless to start dreaming of a Lombardi Trophy.

Nothing comes easy in this league. Macdonald will hammer that home any time he's asked. But the Seahawks are making it look simple. By season's end, they may simply be the best.

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