Mike Macdonald, Seahawks Building 'Strong Spine' in Rebuilt Defense

From front to back, new coach Mike Macdonald and the Seattle Seahawks have overhauled all three levels of their defense in a short time span, placing an emphasis on the middle at defensive tackle, linebacker, and safety while pursuing quality scheme fits.

ORLANDO, Fl. – Still a few weeks away from starting his first offseason program with his new team, Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald isn’t ready to make any declarations about expectations for the defense until he has had a chance to see how things mesh on the practice field.

But while Macdonald doesn’t know where Seattle’s strengths will lie on that side of the football yet and the roster won’t fully take shape until after the 2024 NFL Draft, after a busy month adding reinforcements in free agency, he has genuine optimism about the moves made to fortify the middle of the defense from the front line all the way back to the secondary. If there was a theme to his answers during media availability at the NFL annual meetings on Tuesday, he kept reiterating the importance of strengthening the middle at all three levels as a top priority this offseason.

“You need a strong spine,” Macdonald said. “We’re excited about the guys we have. Guys I haven’t coached yet, but watching them on tape and the relationships some of our coaches with them, I feel really strongly about it and I think we’ll be really strong up the middle.”

Mar 26, 2024; Orlando, FL, USA; Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald speaks to the media

Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports

From a continuity standpoint, Macdonald’s defense won’t look much different up front personnel-wise compared to last season. Along with re-signing Leonard Williams to a three-year deal earlier this month, veterans Dre’Mont Jones and Jarran Reed will also return offering positional flexibility lining up in multiple alignments and massive nose tackle Johnathan Hankins will reunite with defensive coordinator Aden Durde, who worked with him as a defensive line coach in Dallas, after signing a one-year deal with Seattle.

At the center of the line, Macdonald couldn't be happier about Williams returning for the next three seasons and "leading the charge" for the unit after producing four sacks, 11 quarterback hits, and nine tackles for loss in 10 games with Seattle after coming over in a trade deadline deal from the New York Giants in October. His ability to play 1-tech, 3-tech, and 5-tech big end will be a boon for the defensive line flexibility-wise, while Jones could be deployed in similar fashion to breakout star Justin Madubuike in Baltimore with ample opportunities shading the B-gap as well as lining up out wide.

In addition, the Seahawks will also have two draft picks from a year ago in Cameron Young and Mike Morris back in the fold and fourth-year defender Myles Adams returning as an exclusive rights free agent. Even off the edge, Uchenna Nwosu will be back healthy after missing the final 11 games with a torn pectoral muscle last season alongside the trio of Boye Mafe, Darrell Taylor, and Derick Hall, giving the team great depth and versatility that Macdonald can’t wait to play with.

“I think we’re in a great spot. Really excited about the guys we have brought in, really excited about the guys on the roster,” Macdonald assessed. “If the right opportunity presents itself to make us better, we won’t hesitate to pull the trigger, but I think going in we’re very confident in the guys we have. We have some positional flexibility, more so than what we might have had in the past. Being able to change up some fronts with the same personnel on the field will be exciting. Guys that can play multiple spots along the line, we’ll have some cool combinations of people on the field at the same time. That will be fun to figure out with AD [Aden Durde] as we go. We’ve got some cool ideas we’ll experiment with as we get rocking. It’s going to be a lot of fun. We’ve got a lot of talent up there.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Seahawks have little roster carryover behind the front line, starting with a revamped linebacker group. Opting for youth and athleticism, the Seahawks replaced departed former starters Bobby Wagner and Jordyn Brooks with a pair of AFC East expats in Jerome Baker and Tyrel Dodson, signing each of them to one-year contracts.

After coaching All-Pro defenders Roquan Smith and Patrick Queen last season, Macdonald indicated Baker will start off at weakside linebacker and Dodson will begin his tenure in Seattle at MIKE linebacker, echoing earlier comments from general manager John Schneider. However, each player has prior experience at both spots playing in different schemes and eventually, they could swap positions depending on how things shake out in time.

While Baker and Dodson don’t arrive in the Pacific Northwest with the same pedigree as Smith and Queen, Macdonald thinks Seattle could benefit from a bit more flexibility at the position than he had in Baltimore. With each excelling as blitzers - Baker has 22.5 career sacks to his name and Dodson posted a stellar 26.8 percent pressure rate for Buffalo in 2023 - and capable of handling all of the coverage demands asked of them in his scheme, he’s eager to see how the situation plays out in OTAs and training camp.

“Two guys that can run, two intelligent football players, tough, thought they were both good tacklers, they’re both good players in space, and those are things we’re asking from our inside backers,” Macdonald said of Baker and Dodson. “Those guys got to take up a lot of ground, they got to play people out of the backfield, they’ve got to play all the choice routes on the weak side, which is hard to do. I think we got the right guys for the job. They gotta blitz, play man to man. We ask a lot out of our inside backers, so it’ll be a great battle and we’ll see how it comes to life.”

At the safety spots, the Seahawks traded out veterans Quandre Diggs and Jamal Adams as cap casualties for a more interchangeable combo in Rayshawn Jenkins and K’Von Wallace, signing them to two and one-year contracts respectively. Both players have extensive NFL experience at free and strong safety, including Jenkins logging more than 1,900 career snaps at each position in his prior seven seasons, which appealed a great deal to Macdonald and Schneider in the free agent process.

A master at pre-snap disguising and sliding players seamlessly into different roles in a variety of defensive looks, Macdonald now has a trio of safeties in Jenkins, Wallace, and Pro Bowler Julian Love who can wear multiple hats all over the formation and do so at a high level. When utilizing nickel and dime sets with five or more defensive backs on the field, as he often did with the Ravens, he will be able to deploy all three of them on the field at the same time, opening up his playbook to help combat different offensive schemes and opposing personnel groupings each week.

Lauding Jenkins and Wallace for their toughness and well-rounded games, coupled with a talented cornerback group led by former top-five pick Devon Witherspoon, Macdonald and his staff will have no shortage of options searching for the right mix in the secondary over the next few months

“You turn on the tape and these guys play the right way,” Macdonald commented. “People that have coached them think they’re really smart and so I think they’ll be able to handle all the stuff we’re going to ask them to do and spit all the calls out. It comes down to positional flexibility so you’re not just putting guys pigeonholed into roles. We’ll see what they do best at, how they complement one another, see how they work together.”

As Macdonald noted, Seattle still has work left to do as the organization aims to construct the best roster possible for the 2024 season. But by attacking free agency looking for versatile scheme fits at all three levels, Schneider and company have afforded themselves enough flexibility personnel-wise where they shouldn’t be backed into a corner having to draft or sign free agents based on a glaring need and can add the best players available next month to stock the shelves with more talent.

In particular, as Macdonald emphatically stressed on Tuesday, even though he feels good about where the Seahawks are at currently with newcomers such as Baker, Hankins, and Jenkins on board, reinforcing the spine on defense will remain atop the agenda moving forward for a team that finished in the bottom three in run defense each of the past two seasons.

“In general, we’re trying to build a wall up the middle, trying to stay square, trying to set hard edges, make the ball [bounce outside], make them throw the thing outside. You don’t want to get gashed up the middle of your defense, you’ve got to have the right guys who can play there so you can get the job done.”