Week 11's painful loss to the Los Angeles Rams may have been Mike Macdonald's toughest as a head coach with the Seattle Seahawks. You would never know it, though, given his recent media session where the second-year boss appeared calm, cool, and collected as ever.
As the Seahawks prepare this week to face the Tennessee Titans in a Week 12 showdown, the most critical mindset for players is how to bounce back after a tough loss.
Bouncing back is — in any sport — how a team maintains and builds trust within the locker, as well as on the field. We know from several Seahawks' players' media sessions ahead of Week 12 that trust is in no short supply in Seattle.
Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald is focused on bouncing back more than what happened before
Macdonald, I'm sure, feels the same way. A matchup with one of the worst teams in the NFL could be the perfect stitch-up job for the Seahawks to get back on track. At the same time, you never look over an opponent, no matter how bad they are, and Macdonald knows this too, as he praised Titans rookie quarterback Cam Ward.
Dial in our process: this is how Macdonald described the goal of this week heading into Seattle's next game. The results of last Sunday's loss weren't great. In fact, as it relates to their division specifically, the loss handed the Rams the division lead, and now they sit at 8-2 instead of 7-3, which is now Seattle's record. It was a significant step back, and there's no way around it.
That's how a solid coach thinks, no matter how good things are going, or how many points you score — whatever may be working in your favor, there is always room to get better. Macdonald highlighted this when speaking to Seattle's media this week.
"When you start walking around talking about process over result, and then all of a sudden some result happens that you don't like, and then you start talking about the result, you know, what are we doing?" Macdonald explained. "You gotta go back through the whole process of what goes behind all those things, and so, if we're gonna back up what we've been saying, we're just gonna dial in our process.
"...the mentality, all those principles that we talk about, that'll stay the same, and our goal is to continue to get better. We realize there's a great opportunity to get better. You know, you leave the game saying, man, like, we can get better, and we need to do it in a hurry. There needs to be a sense of urgency because we gotta start playing our best football now in the second half of the season."
Urgency in this regard is crucial, especially given how tight the NFC West is and now that Seattle has lost the lead. The San Francisco 49ers aren't dead either, and they still very much have a dog in the race. From here on out, the Seahawks can't afford any back-breaking missteps, and as calm, cool, and collected as Macdonald is, he knows this more than anyone.
Should there be an upset alert pinned on Seattle's game against Tennessee? Likely not. Still, while this game should result in a win, it presents the perfect opportunity for Seattle to make good on the adjustments they made in practice this week — practices Macdonald said were done differently.