As Seahawks' Mike Macdonald era begins Pete Carroll's shadow looms

When Pete Carroll took over as head coach for the Seattle Seahawks the situation was completely different from this offseason when Mike Macdonald was hired to replace Carroll. Carroll always had full control over the roster and he was a partner to general manager John Schneider instead of a subordinate to Schneider. Macdonald works under Schneider.

Seattle was also in a worse spot in 2010 as far as potential and quick future success. Carroll and Schneider made more than 200 moves in order to remake the roster and get the team to resemble something like what they thought would work.

Sure, the team made the playoffs in Carroll's first year, but almost by accident. The team went 7-9 in a terrible NFC West and won the division. The key was winning the Wild Card playoff game against the New Orleans Saints and that included the Beast Quake run. That helped form the mentality of the team for years to come.

New Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald has a lot of work to do to match Pete Carroll

Seattle also had great draft classes between 2010 and 2012. There is som similarities between those years and Seattle's last three draft classes as well. The team has not taken a quarterback recently, and that is a huge difference, but the bones of future success should be built with the players Seattle has added lately.

Carroll won a Super Bowl in his fourth season with the team, and the team went to the playoffs in six of his first seven years. Seattle has enough talent to make a postseason run this year and next year and beyond. What we do not know is whether Mike Macdonald can lead any team to the postseason. He has never been a head coach before.

Macdonald might become the best head coach in Seahawks history. Maybe he wins a couple of Super Bowls. He has a lot of work to do to match Pete Carroll's success, though, especially in Carroll's first half of his 14 seasons with the team. Seattle isn't expected to make the playoffs by many national pundits this year, but the Seahawks weren't expected to make the postseason in 2010 either.

Seattle needed to make a change away from Carroll, though. The defense had digressed and Carroll couldn't fix the issues such as the terrible run defense, allowing too many third down conversions, and bad linebacker coverage. Macdonald's scheme should remedy those problems almost immediately.

Carroll knew how to build team chemistry, though, and though some players might have been miffed with his ever-present positivity, those same players, such as Richard Sherman, returned to help the team in offseason workouts after their playing days were done. That was the kind of alegiance that Carroll could build. That helped sustain success.

Macdonald might be able to do that as well. That is the hope, of course. To equal Carroll is going to be a big ask, though.

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