Mike Macdonald gets completely exposed in Seahawks' Week 5 loss to Giants

Through the first three games of the Seattle Seahawks season, Mike Macdonald looked pretty good. His defense - which, let's be real, is the reason he was hired in Seattle - looked disciplined and made sound tackles. He was the anti-Pete Carroll in that his defense wrapped up. But then, in Week 4 against the Detroit Lions, things changed.

It was easy to rack that up, especially considering Seattle has so many defensive injuries. 12s could rest assured that once everyone was healthy, Macdonald's scheme was great enough where the returning quality players could take advantage of the plan. That was a lie.

Seattle got blown out against a 1-3 New York Giants team in Week 5. Seattle scored a fluke touchdown in the first quarter just before the Giants scored a touchdown. There was a fumble at the goal line, Seahawks safety Rayshawn Jenkins scooped it up and ran it back for a touchdown. That made it 7-0 Seattle, It should have been 7-0 Giants on their way to a 30-6 lead.

Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald loses a game Pete Carroll might have won

Macdonald was out-schemed and out-planned by Giants offensive coordinator Mike Kafka. Like Macdonald, Kafka was a potential head coaching hire this offseason as well. Seattle liked him, but they passed for whatever reason. Maybe the Seahawks wanted to go with someone like Carroll. who was defensive-minded. That might still work out, but it likely won't in 2024.

Kafka, without offensive weapons Malik Nabers and Devin Singletary, was able to get quarterback Daniel Jones to move around, make quick passes, and do enough intentional quarterback runs to keep the Seahawks off-balance. With no Nabers and Singletary, Macdonald should have designed a scheme to limit wthat Jones could do running the ball.

Plus, the Seahawks should have known that New York's top target would be veteran Darius Slay. Instead, Tre Brown was exposed by Slay for over 100 yards receiving. The Seahawks never made up for Brown being awful all game.

Sure, Riq Woolen was injured during the game, but he did not cover Slay much anyway. The issue was Brown and that Macdonald had no answer to how to help Brown.

Macdonald allowed a diminished Giants offseason to gain over 400 yards and dominate time of possession. The head coach has accepted blame for recent tackling issues and poor run-defense game-planning. That only goes so far. Macdonald needs to do a better job of shutting teams down so he doesn't need to make excuses.

Maybe the Seahawks just don't have the players to be good. Or maybe Mike Macdonald just wasn't ready to be a head coach. What we can expect is for Seattle to be 3-3 after Week 6 and the hope of that 3-0 start is gone.

Did Seattle make it close at the end? Yep. Did they deserve to be anywhere close to winning the game? Nope. 12s can blame Mike Macdonald for that.

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