2024 Seahawks OTAs: Mike Macdonald Mic'd Up Detective
Mike Macdonald's Seahawks OTAs Mic'd Up brought rich football dialogue. We have play calls, language, blitzing, run fits, coverage rotations, simple multiplicity, and more to play detective with:
Seahawks OTAs brought with it the first Mic’d Up Segment of the Mike Macdonald era and Seattle’s new head coach was a fresh character.
Macdonald’s interaction with linebacker Tyrell Dodson on his personal practice soundtrack—“No, it would just be like podcasts”—underlined the contrast between Macdonald and his James Brown-grooving, funk-loving predecessor Pete Carroll.
Much like Macdonald, this Mic’d Up was football-rich, the dialogue lean yet meaty. We were handed detective opportunities, with plenty of written and verbal clues.
Situational Football
“So much teaching going in these Seahawks OTAs,” Tacoma News Tribune beat reporter Gregg Bell tweeted on May 30.
Bell’s observation was clear in the Mic’d Up: situational football featured heavily. In the game scenarios period, Macdonald repeatedly mentioned the down and distances faced, to each side of the ball.
He then communicated how to play these situations, for instance: reminding the offense they needed to spike the football to stop the clock—presumably driving down to get into field goal range with zero timeouts.
Macdonald later instructed “sticks awareness” to linebacker “Ty” (fourth-round pick Tyrice Knight). This was timely from Macdonald, as the rookie Knight encountered a third down (probably one of those 3rd and 8s).
The situation gives the defense a chance to get off the field. To accomplish this, defenders must: play to where the first down marker is and avoid getting caught playing too shallow, or too tight to short stuff. It’s about defending the contextual space.
Terminology
When defensive coordinator Aden Durde was asked June 3 about the schematic process, he established that Seattle’s scheme is Macdonald’s.
“When I came in and Mike had a very clear vision of what the system was, I really understood that,” Durde told reporters.
Confirmation arrived via this Mic’d Up.
Scout cards with the play-calls “Rock Sam Spin” and “Under Will Freeze” were visible, each drawing accompanied by a motion from the offense. The call “Under 1 Funnel” was also legible.
These calls are the same language Macdonald used in Baltimore.
To teach the concepts, the staff executes a script. The idea is to install plays versus precise offensive looks. This is accompanied by specific situation settings, like the third down Knight faced earlier.
“Under 1 Funnel” is a base defense call. It is a cover 1 man pass coverage with an under front. The second-level coverage is looking to leverage, or “funnel”, the flow of the backfield.
Versus 21 personnel (2 running backs, 1 tight end), both the Sam LB down on the tight end and the Will LB off the ball, away from the Sam, are responsible for funneling the widest threat to their side in man coverage.
The Mike LB, in the middle, must pay attention to the backfield’s flow. Any time there is full backfield flow, he is responsible for taking the second back man-to-man. Against split flow, the Mike becomes a rat defender in the low hole, looking to cut shallow crossing routes, mostly from the tight end.
The down safety plays man on this TE, though he is able to pass him off shallow flat to the Sam and shallow inside to the Mike. In these instances, the down safety then becomes the rat defender.
For 12 personnel looks (1 running back, 2 tight ends) the Mike and Will linebackers play a “Reggie” technique: two-on-one with the running back, reading his release.
The Sam plays man on the tight end to his side, the “Y”, and the safety mans the second tight end. If the tight ends are paired together, then the Sam plays the widest threat and the safety takes the first vertical.
Now, what about the more visible play calls, “Rock Sam Spin” and “Under Will Freeze”?
“Rock” and “Under” are two fronts Macdonald employed in Baltimore, run out of base (3-4 personnel) defense—which Macdonald used for 21% of last season’s snaps.
The Sam is the third outside linebacker in the system. He will be deployed down on the line of scrimmage and off-the-ball at times. In nickel, the Sam then subs off the field.
The Will is the second inside linebacker who aligns more off-ball, while substituting out for the dime defensive back in six DB packages.
What, though, of “Spin” and “Freeze”, the final parts to each call? The answer can be found in blitzing.
Blitzing
“If you want to play defense for us, you’ve got to be able to blitz, man,” Macdonald declared at the 2024 NFL League Meetings, March 26.
“Whatever your one-on-one is, we expect you to win. We carry a team pass rush mentality. It’s not going to be built around one guy. It’s prudent to let everyone have a chance to win on any given play. But if you’re going to blitz from off-the-ball, we expect you to win one-on-one.”
It was therefore fitting how prominently blitz coaching featured in the Mic’d Up.
The “team pass rush mentality” Macdonald referenced back in Orlando was evident in his teaching of the safeties. His “cadencing down” language looked to get them correctly approaching the line of scrimmage when blitzing—both in their pre-snap disguise and their post-snap timing.
In the second clip, Macdonald’s point to corner Devon Witherspoon about “calling it with a bench” is terminology for a way of setting the strength or calling a play.
As opposed to alternative methods—like setting the strength or play direction to where the most receivers are, or to where a tight end is—“bench” refers to the short side of the field, the boundary side. The opposite is the wide side, the field.
“Calling it with a bench” could well be referring to a blitz direction.
Here’s a possibility: Say Witherspoon was working at nickel, as he did successfully in 2023, like Ravens’ DB Kyle Hamilton. Calling a nickel pressure “with a bench” would tell the nickel DB to align to the wide side of the field and blitz towards the boundary or “bench” side.
Diving Deeper
To explore how Macdonald blitzes in his defensive system, we can look at his Crushing Cancer: Gaylor Family Benefit coaches clinic from this past offseason. (The entire clinic is a fantastic resource for an even better cause.)
When reviewing Baltimore’s existing defensive system, Macdonald found the Ravens had “too many types of pressures that really should be grouped together.”
So he streamlined. That’s why Macdonald now structures his defense, and blitzes, into concept buckets, or what the coach likens to a slot machine.
“Each kind of wheel in the slot machine is one section that guys will learn,” he explained.
“And then once you start to layer it together, that’s how you create, you know, volume within your defense.”
The defense has countless blitz multiplicity as a variety of possibilities can be landed on, each option independent of the other three wheels.
Players learn individual sections such as: the front (how they line up); the blitzing patterns (including the direction); and the coverage (the pass defense played behind the pressure).
“The idea is you’re only teaching a finite amount of things to each player, certain concepts, and then as you build, your scheme, and as you get more complex, and then people understand how to do, you know, those certain concepts, and certain techniques, now you can start to build an all-inclusive package where you can change it from week-to-week, you don’t feel like you’re reinventing the wheel,” Macdonald outlined.
Wheel no.1
The first wheel is the fronts. There are “only about four-to-five fronts that we carry in our scheme, and those should be easy to learn,” Macdonald started.
These fronts would include “Rock” and “Under”. Macdonald’s base 3-4 personnel then has “Laser”—the twin variant of “Rock”—“Soak”, and “Odd”.
In his sub-package defense fronts, think nickel, there is “Even” and “Jet”. For more on this, read:
Wheel no.2
As for the second wheel?
“Whoever’s in the blitz, whether we’re sending two guys, you know sending even three guys off-the-ball, there’s certain patterns that go with who’s in charge of blitzing and that sort of thing,” Macdonald elaborated.
This is the direction and path that the rushers—and blitzers—take to execute the overall pressure. The aim is to set up an advantageous route for one—or more—of the blitzers.
“So, again, only so many things fit in that wheel and the guys should be able to learn,” Macdonald finished on the second wheel.
Wheel no.3
Wheel three is the pass defense run behind the blitz.
“The third thing that we would package with that is coverage that would go with it,” Macdonald revealed.
Wheel no.4 and no.5
The fourth and potentially fifth wheels are for what Macdonald calls “extra sauce.”
“When you get really good and you kinda get to the graduate level stuff, and the guys have a great feel for it, you can start adding different personnel packages and then guys, within different personnel packages can be doing different positions within the scheme,” he expanded.
Coaching
So how is this coached?
Macdonald’s staff educates via pressure stations. They first categorize each of the pressure types they want to run, then rep one category of pressure at an individual station. Each pressure station will eventually run one type of pressure via all of the different ways and all of the different fronts.
Let’s return to our Witherspoon “calling it with a bench” hypothetical.
Say the nickel is blitzing from the call-side of the defense, along with the Mike linebacker. The nickel’s path is to go underneath the Mike. That is two guys blitzing from off-the-ball.
Meanwhile, the away edge defender is dropping into the underneath layer of a fire zone coverage which sees the safeties rotate to the nickel. This would be one overall category of pressure.
Spoon running it “with a bench” would just be one way of calling in the direction of that entire category.
“As you get good at the drill, the guys are getting a good feel that the pressures that you’re doing, then you can start to layer it with more fronts, you can start to change guys’ positions,” Macdonald described.
This is the application of the additional sauce.
“Everyone starts to understand ‘Okay, when we just say the word ‘Brady’, ‘Favre’, whatever your one word call is, and people understand what they’re doing, everyone knows what all the Xs are doing and now you become more interchangeable as time goes on.’”
This layering up of the call can happen because, crucially, each category of pressure is on a totally separate wheel to the front or the coverage. Different slot machine combinations are able to be hit on.
Outside linebacker Boye Mafe raved about the effect of this layering in a July 2 appearance on Green Light with Chris Long.
“The thing I love about this defense is every position can do everything,” Mafe told Long. “You can have a safety walked up on the line, and he’s gotta cover the flat. You know what I’m saying? You could have me off the ball, and I’m blitzing. You know what I’m saying? I love that, I love that.”
“The fact that I could be over the center, to over the tackle, to off the ball, and have the same attack or same mentality with it. You know he [Macdonald] gives you the tools of what he wants it to look like. And he says, now you just have fun with it. So you can sauce it up however you want,” Mafe continued.
“He could say, ‘Alright let’s have someone drop that you would never expect to drop.’”
Mafe’s overall assessment of Macdonald was that “he understands how to utilize people, how to move people.”
Calling the Blitz
To call in these blitzes on gameday, Macdonald looks to keep his signaling as short as possible—a challenging aim given the variety.
“We try to get it to one-to-two words, so there’s a couple of things that we do,” he shared.
“We just like a stock way to run a pressure, it’s just a one word call, alright? And that’s pretty common throughout systems. But as you want to start to add sauce to what you do and to kind of make it like kind of sweeter, per se, is we want to add some sauce to it, but we don’t want to add a lot of verbiage,” Macdonald added.
As a solution, the coach gives individual words more than one meaning.
“The first thing we’ll start to do is we’ll just pair this pressure and the coverage aspect. So every pressure is understood with a certain coverage. Rather than spinning different coverages that are applied to certain pressures. So for example, if I just said the word nickel…nail, that means it’s nail fire zone and we’re not playing any sort of coverage behind it. And then that way, you can eliminate that word.”
It’s this method which leads to a more concise two-word call.
“The first signal is the front, and the second signal is the pressure that includes the coverage,” Macdonald revealed.
So, Nail is the type of blitz and the coverage all-in-one. In Macdonald parlance, “fire zone” likely refers to a three-deep, three-under, middle field closed, fire zone coverage with rotation in a certain direction.
Macdonald can use a trigger word in his front to add further flavor.
“The front...that will be a loaded term,” he began.
“So we actually denote certain types of front in our system that mean ‘Eh, this is a third down front guys, this is some sauce going on, we’re trying to populate the line of scrimmage to add people and try to add confusion to offensive lines and protections.’”
Rather than an additional word, the tag is understood as a sauced-up version of a stock front.
“All we’ve got to do is just say the word ‘Wide’ or ‘Load’ or ‘Rush’. And that will click into the fellers like ‘Hey, we’re adding some people at the line here to try to make it more confusing on the offense,’” Macdonald said.
“Wide”: Two 3-technique defensive tackles in nickel instead of the standard nose and a 3-tech.
“Load”: Overload one side of the line with a 9-technique, a 3, and overload nose.
“Rush”: Two wide 9s, a 3 and a nose—almost like a standard nickel look—but with “Jet” mode engaged: rush the passer, watch the ball, get off the ball, win one-on-one, maintain rush lanes.
Finally, Macdonald can then tack on an extra disguise signal into his call to “keep the picture moving on the quarterback and offensive coordinator” from a coverage/back-end perspective, making it a three-word call.
“Rock Sam Spin” and “Under Will Freeze”
So what of the two we spotted in the Mic’d Up video: Rock Sam Spin and Under Will Freeze? We know Rock and Under are the individual fronts in the play-call, no extra sauce.
The “Sam” and “Will” parts ensure that the correct player blitzes. With further learning, these positions may disappear from the call—although Macdonald did stumble in the coaches clinic saying nickel before his “Nail”.
“Spin” and “Freeze” are the type of pressure which is understood with a particular coverage.
Safety Play
The Seahawks significantly overhauled their safety group this offseason, with the expensive Quandre Diggs and Jamal Adams departing and the free agent signings of Rayshawn Jenkins and K’Von Wallace.
When Macdonald spoke at the owners meeting about the newcomers, the head coach listed traits he desires from safeties with phrases like: Toughness; Really Smart; Handle all the stuff; Flexibility; Man-to-man; Deep areas; and Into the box. Macdonald expects his safeties to do a bit of everything.
Durde explained that OTAs, first and foremost, are about getting the safety basics right.
“Right now, it's about defining your job and understand, before you can build on the versatility, it’s really understanding your job, understanding the checks, understanding how they align and the detail within that,” he said.
“Once they master that, that's when you can start the versatility.”
The Mic’d Up gave us an example of safety alignment and the detail within that.
“Hey, you’re the Rob safety, you’re the Rob safety, read your way down,” Macdonald reminded Wallace.
“Rob safety” is one way of referring to safety rotations in cover 3 zone, hence why Macdonald stressed the safety reading their way down from depth. This safety is becoming an underneath layer.
Later, Macdonald mentioned the twin term to Rob: the “Lee” safety, while reiterating “read your way down, read your way down.”
The safety rotating down must first eliminate threats to the top of their underneath zone (the curl), before playing to the short threats (the flat). They must cover deep to short, not biting on bait shallow routes. If this safety is also coming down to their zone, this is Seattle disguising its coverage via a two-high shell presentation pre-snap.
Contrasting Macdonald’s safety rotation language with Seattle’s previous system proves the multiplicity baked into this defense.
Carroll had two couplets for communicating safety rotation in cover 3: “Rita”/ “Linda” (Left Inside, Right Inside in cover 3 buzz) and “Roger”/ “Lou” (Left Outside, Right Outside in cover 3 sky).
Macdonald, on the other hand, has a trio of cover 3 rotation couplets: “Rob”/ “Lee”, “Rita” / “Linda”, and “Ralph” / “Larry”.
Rob/Lee, which we heard in this video, tells the safety coming down that he is the curl-flat defender, responsible for one of the two outside underneath zones in cover 3. In base personnel, there would be an outside linebacker as the second curl-flat player. In nickel, the second curl-flat would come from the nickel on the opposite side.
Rita/Linda tells the safety he is the hook-curl defender, responsible for one of the two interior underneath zones away from the Sam outside linebacker in base or away from the nickel defensive back in sub-package personnel—essentially looking like cover 3 buzz weak most of the time.
Ralph/Larry tells the safety he is the hook-curl defender to the Sam or nickel—essentially looking like cover 3 buzz strong most of the time.
This extra jargon may seem like small detail, but it’s this type of subtle simplicity, one extra variant, that starts to add up as a coach looks to layer their various concepts together and more versatility is required of the safeties.
Meanwhile, Wallace’s confusion over mishearing “robber” safety (typically more of a man-to-man rotation term), rather than “Rob”, highlighted the importance of OTAs in teaching players the basics of the defense.
It was also a reminder that the 27-year-old has experienced many different NFL defensive systems. Since being picked in the fourth round of the 2020 draft, Wallace has been in three different trees under five separate coordinators. Seattle is Wallace’s fourth new system to learn and Durde his sixth DC.
Macdonald’s coaching point “now you’re the down safety,” is a prompt that in “base”, 3-4 personnel defense, there will likely be more cover 3 and cover 1 played, eight-man front football with one of the safeties playing “down” in the box. The other safety is the high safety, playing in the post. (Think Kam Chancellor and Earl Thomas.)
In theory, Seattle could stay versatile with Jenkins and Julian Love equally splitting the down safety and deep deployments. This would be very interchangeable from the Seahawks.
However, it’s worth noting that the Ravens had Kyle Hamilton as their designated down safety in “base” before moving him to nickel in five defensive backs or more stuff, which they ran for 79% of their snaps. Pay attention to this in the preseason.
Finally, the coaching point to “be the weak quarter safety” refers to playing a deep quarter zone, most often used by Macdonald in cover 4. The weak distinction brings with it stressors for that particular assignment, like the #3 receiver running down the middle of the field, or the weak #1 receiver running a 10-yard in pattern.
Various coverage tools can tweak how a weak quarter safety plays, adjusting how aggressive they play to the weak side (imagine a star isolated receiver) versus how much attention they pay to the strong side (imagine if Tyreek Hill or Travis Kelce was lined up at the #3 spot).
Run Fits
When defending the run, Macdonald sometimes requires his d-line and linebackers to two-gap. This is especially the case in nickel, where the front often looks like a 4-2 and the defense, rather than having the extra man in the box, is one short.
Coaches call it “seven-man spacing” when they are one lighter in the box, in comparison to “eight-man spacing”. Unlike plays where defenders have the additional box body and can fly downhill into their assigned gaps, “seven-man spacing” requires the linebackers to play with a more patient technique.
It was this which Macdonald coached to his linebackers.
“Press this A Gap” is the linebackers coming down to their primary gap. Then they must “eliminate the A Gap”, clearing that they don’t have a tackle-for-loss or the ball hitting up this first gap.
Tracking and leveraging the ball, the linebackers must stay ready to fall back into their secondary gap, the C Gap: “so it’s A to C,” Macdonald drilled.
This might happen, say, versus a zone run where the ball cuts back, the linebacker first showing up inside before falling back to the cutback outside.
This helps the defense in three ways:
The linebacker, still in a position to fall back into their second gap, presses their initial gap but is almost playing two gaps—helping the outnumbered defense cheat the math.
By not screaming downhill all the way through their first gap, the linebacker is preventing the run from cutting back too fast for the defense to stop the play.
Critically, the added time this creates allows the coverage-first defenders, say a deep quarter safety in cover 4, to eliminate their pass read, get their run read and then come downhill to join the run fit.
The d-line technique is married to this linebacker play. In base, a nose tackle could play more of a two-gap technique on the center, as could a 4i-technique end to the C Gap bubble side on the inside shoulder of an offensive tackle.
Say the offense looks to run into the away A Gap before cutting back into the C Gap. They are looking to bend the ball back off the block on the 4i end. This means the linebacker behind, depending on backfield flow, might need to press the A Gap before falling back into the C Gap as the ball declares there, all while the linemen in front keep him clean and added run support is given the time to arrive from deep.
In nickel four-down fronts, rather than playing with a one-gap, shaded on the outside shoulder of the center nose tackle, for the vast majority of snaps Macdonald utilizes a 2i-nose tackle, aligned on the inside shoulder of the guard.
This nose tackle looks to play more of a two-gap technique. Again, this is about slowing the run down and making sure it hits slower. The linebackers are expected to play off this technique too.
It’s this approach which the Seahawks defense experienced great difficulties with when they switched to the Vic Fangio system in 2022. Frankly, the defensive line and second level sucked at it. Clint Hurtt’s coaching staff found it so tricky that they reverted to playing a pure shaded nose in 2023 and hitting gaps more aggressively with their linebackers.
However, it’s also the same method which the Seahawks defense excelled at under the design and coaching of Dan Quinn back in 2014. This brings us nicely to new DC Durde, a man who did a great job last season coaching the interior of the Cowboys’ defensive line to play with this 2i in a nickel four-front.
Dallas’ ability to lean more heavily into seven-man spacing run fit mechanics, buying time for the quarter safety to join into the fit from deep, will have impressed Macdonald in his hiring process.
The Future
So, while there are concept similarities to what Seattle has done defensively in previous years, there is a lot of newness—particularly in language. It might therefore be prudent to temper year one expectations, even with Macdonald’s play-calling and system creation.
As training camp starts, detail will become more intense. There is a strict “no cell phones; no photos” instructive to attending fans and we may be waiting some time for our next detective opportunity.
The new scheme, staff, and players is a double-edged sword: though everyone must learn, the Seahawks have the advantage of the unknown to inflict on opponents.
This article was edited by Alistair Corp
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