Pete Carroll was always notoriously bad with clock management when he was the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks. The way he would waste timeouts far too early in games or the second half often put his team into more stressful situations than it should have been. Mike Macdonald doesn't do that.
In fact, Macdonald proved how brilliant he is as a coach in Week 15, beyond how good his defense is. Seattle mostly shut the Indianapolis Colts down in the second half of Week 15 after a first half that saw Seattle keep getting awful field position. Macdonald's team appeared to be on the verge of losing an ugly game.
Near the end of the second half, though, with the Colts on offense and looking to kick a field goal to take the lead with less than two minutes left, it was the Seahawks that kept using timeouts. The odd part is that Indy wasn't in obvious field goal position. The Colts should have been the ones calling timeouts.
New Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald takes the gamble Pete Carroll never would have
But Macdonald also knew that if Indianapolis made a long field goal (which kicker Blake Grupe did by making one from 60 yards to give the Colts a short-lived lead), the coach didn't want his team to not have enough time in which to try a long field goal of their own to win.
Postgame, Mike Macdonald told reporters that he trusted Brian Eayrs to help make the game-altering decisions of taking the timeouts before Seattle's offense had the ball. Eayrs is tasked with advising about clock management situations, but the head coach could choose to accept the advice or not. Pete Carroll might not have.
Macdonald believed in what Eayrs was discussing so much that the coach gave a game ball to the assistant after Week 15. He gave credit where it was due, but Macdonald still proved to be the anti-Carroll.
Macdonald also showed the kind of leadership qualities that make a great coach. He trusted Eayrs to have the right approach in game management, and he trusted quarterback Sam Darnold and offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak to get the Seahawks in field goal position. It was a team effort, sure.
But none of that would have happened if Pete Carroll were still the head coach. He likely would have let the Colts wind down the clock and win the game with a late field goal. Mike Macdonald made sure that didn't happen.