Seahawks camp day 2: Mike Macdonald’s disguising D beats Sam Darnold’s offense
The winning, and woofin’, started on one of the first plays of the second training-camp practice.
Third down, 11-on-11 scrimmaging Thursday. Coach Mike Macdonald unleashes his tricky, changing defense on new quarterback Sam Darnold and the Seahawks’ starting offense. Darnold sees cornerback Riq Woolen run deep to vacate his left sideline. The QB’s front-side flat is now open, green grass. Darnold has wide receiver Cooper Kupp running a quick out route right into the expanse.
It looks to the quarterback and receiver like a busted coverage, and a first down.
But as Woolen drops, safety Coby Bryant flies up from his position 12 yards off the ball. From seemingly out of nowhere, Bryant jumps Kupp’s short route outside. Seemingly startled, Darnold sails his pass high and wide of the now-covered Kupp.
Incomplete. Punting time for the offense.
Defense wins. Again.
The defensive players on their sidelines howled at that.
“You like that switch coverage?” Woolen asked a bystander as he came off the field.
During the next 11-on-11 period, D’Anthony Bell, the third safety in another one of Macdonald’s defensive twists, baited Darnold into throwing to Jaxon Smith-Njigba. The wide receiver was running a crossing route backside from left to right, away from the quarterback’s half roll-out to the left. Bell from the other side of the field cut right, to the middle, in front of Smith-Njigba. Interception, Darnold’s first one of the two-day camp.
Devon Witherspoon, Julian Love, Bryant, Woolen and the defensive celebrated Bell’s pick in a mosh pit behind the offense’s huddle.
The second-team defense then denied backup quarterback Drew Lock on a third down. Leonard Williams and Derick Hall, lined up with fellow starters behind the offense’s huddle, began taunting Smith-Njigba and his offense teammates for losing again.
Macdonald’s brash defense, the unit that swarmed and swamped opposing offenses to end the Seahawks’ 2024 season, appeared on day two of training camp to be set for the 2025 season to start.
It does on Sept. 7, against San Francisco.
“Oh, we ready, though,” Witherspoon, the Pro Bowl cornerback, said following practice. “We just take our time with it, but we ready.
“We are ready to get after it, man. Season’s right around the corner. It’s coming up, fast.
“So, we’re ready to go to work.”
Sam Darnold vs. Mike Macdonald’s defense
This is the disguising and confusing defense Darnold has seen in regular seasons from Macdonald’s former Ravens defenses, including while the eight-year veteran was a 49ers backup quarterback playing against Baltimore. He threw an interception and got sacked twice playing against Macdonald’s schemes when the 49ers lost to the Ravens at home on Christmas night late in the 2023 season.
Then again, Darnold beat Macdonald’s defense last season, when the QB had elite offensive talent for the Minnesota Vikings winning at Seattle. He threw three touchdown passes with no interceptions. Macdonald’s schemes did result in three sacks of Darnold in that game last December.
To get this now, in July, is only going to aid Darnold and the Seahawks’ remade offense in being ready for real in September, October and beyond.
At least that’s the silver lining to take from what happened to them in camp Thursday.
“Yeah, it helps a ton,” Darnold said after the second camp practice. “Whenever you can go up against a defense as good schematically, combined with the great players we have on defense, it’s only going to help us.
“Just showing one way, coming the other — especially on third and mediums and third-and-long situations. The second-and-long situations, they do similar things. And then even in just base downs, the safeties Coby and Julian, they do a great job of disguising.
“It’s always a fun challenge, every, single time.”
Mike Macdonald, year 2
This is where Macdonald’s defense is ahead of where it was in Seattle this time last year.
Last summer at the start of training camp, Macdonald was a 36-year-old rookie head coach. He was two days into his first NFL training camp. The league’s youngest head man had just hired 22 new coaches. He was still learning his players. Heck, Macdonald was still learning how to conduct a day in training camp, how to run a practice.
Now? This is absolutely Macdonald’s defense.
He’s still in progress trying to make the offense and this entire team his team. That is, in his rugged, physical mentality.
Early in the first practice of camp Wednesday, Macdonald did not like the offense’s pace.
“The operation needs to speed up!” he yelled into the offense’s huddle at one point between plays. “In and out of the huddle!”
Yet, the head coach is buoyed. Boosted by trading for Ernest Jones, his prototype middle linebacker, last October, then re-signing Jones to a $33 million contract this spring to be the defense’s centerpiece for years.
Macdonald is emboldened by seeing last season his ways work in Seattle as a head man as they did in Baltimore as a defensive coordinator; his unit was among the NFL’s top five the latter half of last season.
Macdonald has built this Seahawks’ defense to undeniably be the strength of Seattle’s team.
Like it used to be.
And — like its famed “Legion of Boom” predecessors who won a Super Bowl then came within a yard of winning a second straight one 10 years ago — this defense is the soul of these Seahawks.
It’s Macdonald’s growth from year one to two. It shows up daily on the practice field, while Darnold and new coordinator Klint Kubiak continue remaking the offense.
It still needs to catch up to the defense. Which is exactly what the head coach wants.
“Second time around, I think it’s the same message with the rest of the team: If you don’t have the mentality of, ‘Hey, let’s assess where we were, what we were thinking, why we were doing the things. How we can learn? How we can grow?’ (then we’re lost),” Macdonald said. “I’m right there with the guys.
“I’d say (I’m) more confident. (I) have a better feel for what we’re trying to achieve on a day-in-day-out basis. How we message things; keep it a little tighter. Just a connection with the guys. Just being around for another year — whole staff, really.”
That’s great for Witherspoon, Woolen, Williams, Bryant, Love and the defense.
It’s still a work way early in progress for Darnold, Kupp, Kubiak and Seattle’s offense.
“Yeah, I think for us it’s, it’s playing fast, playing decisive,” Darnold said. “You know, we talked about that all the time in team meetings and in offensive meetings, just being very decisive with what we’re doing schematically.
“And, you know, for me, it’s really also listening to my feet. That’s a huge thing that we always preach in a quarterback room. It’s, OK if my first read isn’t there there, check it down. There’s no reason to sit in the pocket a little longer because I think something might open up, especially on first and second down. Just get to the check down and move on.”
Macdonald finds the defense dictating to the offense early in his second camp as a head coach as encouraging.
“It’s really exciting,” Macdonald said.
“But, a lot of growth.”
This story was originally published July 24, 2025 at 5:14 PM with the headline "Seahawks camp day 2: Mike Macdonald’s disguising D beats Sam Darnold’s offense."
