Mike Macdonald’s unique message to challenge his Super Bowl-champion Seahawks
Talk of the task ahead started even before the Seahawks’ parade through downtown Seattle.
The words came out even as they celebrated their Super Bowl victory in February.
“Let’s run it back!”
Run it back? Coach Mike Macdonald is saying the opposite to his Seahawks players as the NFL champions have gotten back together on the field this week for organized team activities practices (OTAs) at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center in Renton.
“We’re using the term we want to ‘run it forward,’” Macdonald said at OTAs this week.
“’It’ meaning our process, and who we are.”
That is who Macdonald is. The 38-year-old, first-time head coach and son of a West Point graduate is entering his third year leading the Seahawks. He emphasizes perfecting his process over worrying about results.
In that way, Macdonald doesn’t feel like his champions are starting over, not from scratch. They are seeking to improve toward perfecting the process toward winning they’ve already established.
As right tackle Abe Lucas says, it’s about seeking to learn exactly how good this team that won 16 of 20 games and the Super Bowl last season can become.
“I’ve thought a lot about that,” Macdonald said, “and I think when you look at some of these high-performing teams that have been able to do it over a long period of time I think the common thread that you find is a standard that you feel responsible to uphold on a daily basis. And part of that standard here is chasing. It’s a spirit of evolution and a spirit of moving forward all the time.
“That’s where our minds are.”
The coach said he’s spent a lot of time thinking about this since he and his team beat the Patriots and won Super Bowl 60 Feb. 8.
“(It’s) giving us the freedom to move forward and have the space to kind of make each kind of new phase of the year our own and unique to us. There’s a balance there,” Macdonald said.
“But again, I’ve just been really pleased with every day’s work, and haven’t sensed an ounce of complacency, and that’s been really positive.”
This mantra for 2026 — running it forward, not back — is just beginning. Macdonald says he’s going to be preaching it through the team’s offseason workouts that end with mandatory minicamp June 8-10. Then the coach will be talking about it through training camp that begins in late July, through the opening game of the NFL season in Seattle Sept. 9, a Super Bowl rematch with New England at Lumen Field, and throughout the coming season.
“I think this is going to be a conversation that we’re going to talk about consistently. I don’t think it’s a one-and-done type of conversation,” Macdonald said. “Really, it’s just how we talk about, how we operate all the time. It’s something that we’re having conversations with our team and our units every day about who we want to be and how we want to do things.
“And this situation is no different.”
It’s not that talking about being the Super Bowl champions is taboo for this team that’s still young at its core with reigning NFL offensive player of the year Jaxon Smith-Njibga (24 years old), three-time Pro Bowl cornerback Devon Witherspoon (25) and Pro Bowl quarterback Sam Darnold (28).
“We don’t avoid it. But it’s not really the top of mind,” Macdonald said. “There’s necessary times to talk about it. Like the ring ceremony. We’ll be partying that night and having a great time and celebrating that team and those people. But it’s not really in our focus right now.
“The way I phrase it to the team is, it’s something that could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Hopefully it’s more than once in a lifetime for our team. But that’s a thing that happened that we can cherish and we should be proud of, because of the amount of work that it took and all the things that go into winning a Super Bowl. We should be really proud of that.
“But I think the thing that we find the joy in is what we’ve created and the way of life, what we’re trying to do here on a daily basis.”
That’s the locker-room and practice-field culture Macdonald has established after two seasons in Seattle.. It’s a brotherhood, a unique togetherness the team’s oldest veterans such as Pro Bowl defensive linemen Leonard Williams and DeMarcus Lawrence said were the reason the Seahawks won it all last season.
“The cool part about last year’s team was the team and the process and the shadowboxing (in the locker room), and all the stuff that goes with trying to become a great team every day,” Macdonald said. “Kind of put it in two different boxes where they don’t have to be enemies of one another.”
It’s not a tough sell for Macdonald. For his players, winning the Super Bowl 3 1/2 months ago validates their coach’s belief that emphasizing the process will yield the desired results.
They are back at these voluntary OTA practices in May, just as they were when they didn’t have to be 12 months ago. Darnold, Smith-Njigba, Witherspoon, Lucas, Williams, Lawrence, all reestablishing right away the Seahawks culture for 2026. Like they did for a Super Bowl title for 2025. “Just keep going,” defensive tackle Byron Murphy said.
“We accomplished a lot last season,” Murphy said. “(But) I feel like we should ask ourselves: What are the things we can improve on? As far as what we did last year, how can we build on that? How can we just keep going, and fix little errors and little mistakes we had last season? How can we go about that and perfect that?
“And just take it to another level.”
Trade for special teams
Last month the Seahawks drafted for special teams with sixth-round pick Emmanuel Henderson Jr.
Wednesday, they traded for more in their kicking game that was the league’s best last season by most NFL metrics.
Seattle sent a conditional seventh-round choice in the 2028 draft to the Jets to acquire Irvin Charles, New York’s standout special-teams player in 2023 and ‘24.
Irvin, 29, hasn’t played since he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee in week 14 of the Jets’ 2024 season. He missed all of 2025 recovering from that.
He played 25 games excelling in New York’s kicking game his first two seasons in the league. New York signed him in the spring of 2023 as a rookie free agent. Irvin played at Indiana University in Pennsylvania and at Penn State.
The Seahawks waived wide receiver Trayvon Rudolph, an undrafted rookie out of Toledo, to make room for Charles on the 90-man offseason roster.
This story was originally published May 29, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Mike Macdonald’s unique message to challenge his Super Bowl-champion Seahawks."
