Busy Mike Macdonald knows he, Seahawks have decisions this week, including on Geno Smith
Mike Macdonald is a busy guy.
When he’s not joining his boss and general manager John Schneider hosting their new offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb at a pub across Interstate 405 from Seahawks headquarters in Renton, he’s hiring the rest of his new Seattle coaching staff.
The 36-year-old former Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator is also coordinating with his wife Stephanie their move from Baltimore. She is back in Maryland packing up there as her husband and first-time head coach adds to his new staff in Seattle.
In the 12 days since the Seahawks made him their ninth head coach, Macdonald has hired Grubb, the former Washington Huskies play caller, former Dallas Cowboys line coach Aden Durde as his new defensive coordinator, 64-year-old Leslie Frazier as his assistant head coach and trusted advisor, plus 34-year-old Jay Harbaugh as his special-teams coach.
Last weekend, jointly with the agreement of Grubb, ex-UW offensive line coach Scott Huff also reportedly agreed to leave coach Kalen DeBoer at Alabama to coach the Seahawks’ offensive line. Huff pre-dated DeBoer and Grubb at Washington. He coached what was voted as college football’s best offensive line last season with the Huskies.
Meanwhile, Macdonald and Schneider are on calls and interviews trying to hire the rest of the team’s position coaches. They’d prefer to do that before the NFL’s annual scouting combine begins in Indianapolis in two weeks.
Through all that, Macdonald is calling Seahawks players to introduce himself. That’s something no Seahawks coach has had to do in 15 years, because Pete Carroll was their coach for the last 14, until Jan. 10.
The first players Macdonald has talked to? The most important ones. The quarterbacks.
Yes, two of them.
Geno Smith and Drew Lock
Macdonald said Monday on Seattle’s KIRO-AM radio the Seahawks players he’s been talking to most so far are Geno Smith and Drew Lock.
It’s obvious Macdonald — and now Grubb — would talk to Smith. He’s the team’s starting quarterback. He just participated in his second consecutive Pro Bowl.
But Lock? His contract has expired. The backup is a month from entertaining free-agent offers. The 27-year-old is likely to get more of those than he did this time last year, before he returned to Seattle on a one-year deal. That’s because of Lock’s start for the injured Smith and rally late in a Monday night game on national television to beat the defending NFC-champion Philadelphia Eagles in December.
“The quarterbacks, Drew and Geno, have been the main guys we’ve talked to,” Macdonald told KIRO’s “Brock and Salk Show” on Monday morning.
It’s notable, this week in particular, Macdonald is talking to the Lock with Smith, and that he sees Lock, 27, as an option at quarterback for 2024.
The offseason waiver period began Monday. Terms of the three-year, $75 million contract extension Smith signed before last season coming off the first Pro Bowl year of his career dictate on the fifth day of this waiver period, Friday, all of Smith’s $12.7 million salary for the 2024 season becomes fully guaranteed.
Schneider and Macdonald have given zero indication they are ready to move on from Smith. He turns 34 during next season. His contract runs through 2025.
When he was asked at his introductory press conference Feb. 1 what he thinks of the Seahawks’ quarterback, Macdonald said: “Pretty sure he’s at the Pro Bowl right now.”
Smith isn’t the only veteran on the team whose contract becomes guaranteed if he is on the roster past the end of this work week.
Pro Bowl wide receiver DK Metcalf’s salary of $13 million for 2024 becomes fully guaranteed Friday.
Top pass rusher Uchenna Nwosu gets $9,875,000 in base pay plus an option bonus if he’s on the roster past Friday. Nwosu, 27, missed the last 2-1/2 months of 2023 with a season-ending pectoral injury.
The $51 contract defensive end Dre’Mont Jones signed with Seattle in free agency from Denver before last season stipulates $7 million of his $11 million salary for 2024 becomes guaranteed Friday.
How much turnover of players on the roster does Macdonald expect between the 2023 and ‘24 Seahawks?
“I don’t know if I can answer that,” Macdonald told KIRO-AM. “That’s something that John and I were working through.
“And I know there are some decisions that we have to make pretty soon here.”
The first, and biggest one is Friday, on Smith.
His salary becoming guaranteed would put his salary-cap charge for 2024 at $31.2 million. That would be the highest on the team. That is the case with most veteran quarterbacks who are in the top half of the league in performance.
That $31.2 million cap charge for Smith would be the NFL’s 12th-highest among quarterbacks for this year, just behind Detroit’s Jared Goff and ahead of Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow.
If Schneider and Macdonald were decide this week is the time to release or trade Smith to start anew at quarterback — that this new Seahawks era includes change at the roster’s most important position — the Seahawks would absorb a $17.4 million dead-cap charge for this year. They would get a cap savings of $13.8 million.
Alternatively, they could ask Smith to restructure his contract to lower his salary-cap charge for 2024. That saves the team now but would push more of the cost for Smith into 2025, whether he plays for Seattle or not in that final year of his deal.
Again, there’s been no indication the Seahawks want to move on from Smith. It’s that his contract makes this week a decision point for Schneider and Macdonald.
“I’m not going in with the mentality, ‘Hey, let’s flip this thing over,’” Macdonald said Monday, talking about the roster in general for 2024. “It’s more of an open mind; what’s best for the team?
“Obviously, John’s handling it on the personnel side. But we’ll tag-team through that whole process.”
Enter Ryan Grubb
Grubb, 47, has only two seasons’ experience calling plays at the highest, Power-5 level of college football.
UW had a 21-game winning steak over those two years. Grubb’s offense had quarterback Michael Penix Jr. leading the nation with more than 4,500 yards passing each season. Grubb had Penix constantly winging the ball deep down the field for mammoth plays.
Monday on the radio, Macdonald explained what he likes about Grubb while watching what he and his Huskies did the last two seasons. (The decision to hire Grubb came on Friday night; the official hiring was still to come from the team as of Monday afternoon.)
Macdonald said he admired Grubb’s bevy of pre-snap motion and formation shifts at Washington.
“That gives defenses fits — and gives quarterbacks answers,” the new Seahawks coach said. “And that’s good for us.”
Macdonald noted how well Washington also ran the ball under Grubb.
Grubb’s calls for Penix to throw deep balls to soon-to-be-first-round pick Rome Odunze and UW’s waves of top receivers hid the fact Huskies halfback Dillon Johnson ran for 1,195 yards and 16 touchdowns this past season. When Johnson was injured and rendered ineffective in the national-title game last month, Washington’s offense went nowhere in the final-game loss to Michigan.
Carroll was well-known for valuing his chief trait in his quarterbacks: minimizing risk. That was another edge Smith had over Lock in winning Seattle’s QB job two years ago. In training camp before the team’s 2022 season Carroll called Lock, who led the NFL in interceptions in his second year starting for Denver in 2020, a “gunslinger.”
Monday, KIRO’s Mike Salk asked Macdonald where the coach stood with his Seahawks quarterback taking risks with the ball for big rewards.
“Or,” Salk asked, “are you of the mind that your quarterback cannot turn the ball over, at all costs?”
“You have to be aggressive,” Macdonald said. “And you do that through calculated risk.
“Those are the things that you have to be measured about. We’re not just going to be chucking the ball all over the yard every down. That’s not the way to win in the NFL. ...You’ve got to be able to run the ball. And you’ve got to be able to protect it.
“But there’s going to be opportunities to throw the football down the field and to get the ball on the perimeter. Obviously, those things are imperative to win in the NFL.”
Grubb was the offensive line coach at Eastern Michigan (2014-16) with DeBoer as his offensive coordinator there. Grubb was the O-line coach at Fresno State while DeBoer was Fresno State’s offensive coordinator in 2017 and ‘18. Grubb became Fresno State’s offensive coordinator in 2019 when DeBoer left for the same job at Indiana.
When Fresno hired back DeBoer to be its head coach before the 2020 season, Grubb stayed as Fresno State’s offensive coordinator. DeBoer brought Grubb to Seattle to be Washington’s offensive coordinator when UW hired DeBoer as its new head coach in December 2021.
“Ryan’s an O-line guy at heart, and I really respect that about him,” Macdonald said, noting many successful NFL offensive coordinators have the same background.
“That definitely going to be one of our core identities, to be able to run the ball.
“As we build this thing out,” Macdonald said, “I’m sure that it will look a little bit different than it did at Washington.”
How much?
Michael Penix Jr. in play?
Hiring Grubb brings with it understandable speculation Penix is about to follow his Huskies offensive coordinator to the Seahawks.
Seattle owns the 16th choice in this spring’s draft. Penix, the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy this past college season, led Washington to the national championship game last month. Penix then starred in practices at the Senior Bowl all-star showcase. Most NFL personnel evaluators view Penix as just below the top three QBs in this draft class.
Caleb Williams from USC, Drake Maye of North Carolina and LSU’s Jayden Daniels, the Heisman winner for 2023, are expected to go among the top 10 or so picks. So if the Seahawks with Grubb want Penix, he might be available to them in the first round.
Seattle doesn’t have a second-round selection this year. Schneider traded it to the New York Giants this past fall to acquire veteran defensive tackle Leonard Williams. That go-for-it-now move didn’t work. Seattle missed the playoffs with the league’s 30th-ranked defense and 31st-ranked run defense.
Williams is now a pending free agent. He indicated late last season he’s looking forward to seeing what the market will bear for him next month.
The Seahawks could use a defensive linemen or three who can stop the run and rush the passer. They could get one with that 16th pick in round one.
But they also don’t have a quarterback of the future. Even if Smith plays out his contract he will be 35 when it ends after the 2025 season. Macdonald’s contract to coach Seattle is four years longer than his quarterback’s.
“We’ve got really good players here, on offense, Macdonald said.
As for what he wants from his Seahawks quarterback, specifically, Macdonald told KIRO-AM Monday: “To me, can you make people around you better? And, can you bring people together; are they going to go play for you?”
Seattle’s new coach talked about the obvious importance for any quarterback to see the entire field and anticipate what the defense is going to do and the offense’s opportunities that are imminent.
“But,” he said, “at its core it’s, hey, can we bring the team together and will the guys follow you when they fight on Sundays?
“That’s, obviously, that’s the starting point.”
That’s, obviously, an aspect in Smith’s favor.
He was Seattle’s team captain by player vote last season, for the first time. He won the job to replace traded Russell Wilson in the spring and summer before the start of the 2022 season largely because Carroll sided with how much the locker room respected Smith for his four years backing up Wilson on the Seahawks.
This story was originally published February 12, 2024 at 3:04 PM.
