5 difficult riddles the Seattle Seahawks must solve at 2024 training camp

The Seattle Seahawks’ 2024 training camp gets fully underway next week when veterans show up on July 23. Rookies are already in camp and getting the added time needed so that they can hopefully help the team sooner rather than later.  But the coaching staff is still new to everyone.

This should make Seattle's training camp even more interesting this year compared to the previous 13 editions. Head coach Mike Macdonald takes over for Pete Carroll and for the first time in 2011, there are no known schemes that the players worked on the previous season. This makes the Seahawks organization a bit of an unknown to themselves and to other teams.

Preseason games will be the first time 12s get to see someone making the final decisions other than Carroll since 2010. This will be exciting, sure, but could also be dangerous. Seattle has several coaches in important positions that have never held those same positions in the NFL before. Seattle has several riddles to solve ahead of Week 1 of the 2024 season, we just don't yet know if the coaches know how to get the answers.

Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald needs to learn on the job quickly

By all accounts, Macdonald is a very smart guy who knows how to streamline his seemingly complex defensive system so that players understand it more easily and more quickly. A player who is on the field play after play cannot afford to think about what he should do, he needs to just see what is unfolding and react. A half-second can make a massive difference between a takeaway or a touchdown for the other team.

All that said, the defense should be OK by early in the season. Macdonald knows what he is doing on that side of the ball as, even though he is just 37 years old, he has been successful in the NFL for a number of years. What he has never done before at any level of football is be a head coach. He will need to think in ways he has not before.

The truth is that Macdonald will learn as much about himself as he does about his team during this training camp. He has never been the leader on the field before. Whatever happens in camp, he will be in charge. If the team isn't as prepared for the season as they normally might, he would only have himself to blame.