Why Mike Macdonald and his new Seahawks coaches are skipping NFL combine + Geno Smith math
Pete Carroll loved the combine. One part of it, especially.
He loved the in-person interviews each NFL team gets in Indianapolis.
At the 2019 combine Carroll, then approaching 70, ripped off his shirt in a meeting room to match DK Metcalf’s Adonis-like physique. Metcalf, 50 years younger had walked into his meeting with the Seahawks shirtless. Carroll, and Metcalf, loved it.
That spring, the Seahawks drafted the huge wide receiver from Mississippi. Five years later, Metcalf remains a team cornerstone.
Carroll does not. Six weeks ago, the Seahawks fired him fired as Seattle’s coach and final football authority.
So which new Seahawks coach is most likely to take his shirt off while meeting with the next prospect at this year’s NFL scouting extravaganza?
None. Not new coach Mike Macdonald. Not any of the Seahawks’ 23 assistants just hired to work with the team’s new head coach.
They won’t even be at the combine this coming week.
Macdonald and his coaching staff are staying behind at Seahawks headquarters in Renton on Monday. General manager John Schneider is flying to Indiana without them.
It will be only Seattle’s group of scouts, personnel men and team doctors at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis that runs from Tuesday through the weekend. It’s the first time in at least a generation the Seahawks will have no coaches there.
Why?
The Seahawks announced their 24-man coaching staff Thursday. That matches the total Carroll had last year in Seattle, minus strength and conditioning coaches. Only one of Macdonald’s 23 assistants are holdovers from Carroll’s 2023 staff. That is Karl Scott. The senior defensive assistant works with the pass coverage, cornerbacks and safeties
As Schneider was hiring Macdonald, 36, to be the league’s youngest head coach three weeks ago, they decided the former Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator and his assistants would skip going to the combine. Macdonald was coaching Baltimore through its AFC championship game Jan. 28. He and Schneider didn’t settle on hiring offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb, defensive coordinator Aden Durde and special-teams coordinator Jay Harbaugh until mid-February.
Macdonald is using combine week to stay at the team facility to finish the Seahawks’ new playbooks with those 22 other new coaches. This is the first coaching staff that’s had to do install entirely new playbooks in an offseason since 2009. That was the year before Seattle hired Carroll to install his system he ran here for the next 14 seasons.
So, yes, Macdonald and his assistants have a lot of catching up to do before the players report back to the Seahawks’ facility April 8 to begin their offseason workout program.
Because of the coaching change, the league permits Seattle to have one additional voluntary minicamp for veteran players this spring. That further increases the coaches’ urgency to get the playbooks finalized soon.
“They’re getting to a point where it’s going to be all ball now,” Schneider said this past week on Seattle’s KIRO-AM radio. “They’re just focused on implementing their system, so they’re not going to be down to the combine next week. They’re all going to be here 24/7 installing everything that needs to get installed.
“It’s basically a race to April 8 when the players come in. Mike had coached in the AFC championship game, so there was a little bit of a feeling that we were behind the eight ball a little bit.”
Trend of coaches skipping the NFL combine
Macdonald staying away from Indianapolis isn’t unprecedented in the NFL.
In fact, it’s become a trend lately in Seattle’s NFC West.
Kyle Shanahan, coach of the Seahawks’ chief rival San Francisco 49ers, did not attend the combine last year. That didn’t exactly ruin the Niners’ 2023. They repeated as division champions. They finished this past season in the Super Bowl.
Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay and many of his assistants haven’t been to a combine since 2020. The Rams won a Super Bowl in that span. This past season they also did what the Seahawks didn’t: make the playoffs.
Dallas Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said Friday he isn’t going to this combine, either.
As film study of workouts becomes even higher-tech, some coaches around the league are valuing more bringing in the prospects they are most interested in for visits in their team facilities between the combine and the draft. They see that as more productive than seeing and meeting with players in the combine’s often cattle-call like settings. More than 300 players plus thousands of team personnel, agents, doctors, even college underclassmen getting a feel for the NFL scouting process will all be in Indianapolis this week.
Seahawks coaches will review this combine’s workouts remotely on film. They also have the opportunity to host 30 prospects on visits at Seahawks headquarters between the combine and the draft April 25-27. Coaches also may join Schneider and Seattle’s scouts at Pro Day workouts by top collegians on campuses across the U.S. over the next month.
Plus, Macdonald and two of his new Seahawks coordinators already know many of this combine participants more than many NFL coaches do.
They coached them.
Macdonald was Michigan’s defensive coordinator three seasons ago and has kept ties to the Wolverines’ program. Harbaugh has been on Michigan’s staff for the last decade. Grubb was Washington’s offensive coordinator through UW’s loss to Michigan in the national championship game last month.
Michigan (a record 18) and Washington (13) have the most players invited to this year’s combine.
So instead of the draft, the Seahawks’ new coaches are staying home to lay the foundation for Macdonald’s program for the players.
“We’re getting caught up,” Schneider said, “but still staying true to his hiring process and the group that’s come in, and just mixing all those people together.”
What the Seahawks will do at the NFL combine
So, yes, this will be a unusual Seahawks week in Indianapolis.
Instead of coaches, it will be GM Schneider, senior director of player personnel Matt Berry and Seattle’s scouting and personnel staffs meeting with a maximum of 45 prospects of the team’s choosing, for up to 18 minutes each. They also will watch the workouts inside Lucas Oil Stadium and review the team’s medical evaluations of draft prospects.
The nationally televised workouts on the field (40-yard dashes, cone shuttle runs, jumps) inside the Indianapolis Colts’ domed stadium begin Thursday with defensive linemen — including former UW Husky Bralen Trice — and linebackers. Friday, defensive backs and tight ends will have on-field workouts. Saturday, it’s quarterbacks, wide receivers and running backs. The combine finishes Sunday with drills for offensive linemen.
The Seahawks own the 16th pick in round one of this year’s draft. They don’t have a second-round pick. Schneider traded it to the New York Giants in October to acquire veteran defensive tackle Leonard Williams. Williams is now poised to enter unrestricted free agency for the first time in his career March 11.
To get a second-round pick this year, Schneider is likely going to have to trade down from 16 in round one, or trade a starting player, or both.
Trading down in the draft isn’t an option for Schneider, it’s more a way of life. He has traded 10 of the last 12 first-round picks he’s had as Seattle’s GM.
If he’s going to do it again this April, this week in Indianapolis may be when and where those talks form.
Schneider used the 2022 combine to meet secretly in Indy with Broncos GM George Paton. They sketched trade proposals on the back of napkins.
Two weeks later, the Seahawks traded quarterback Russell Wilson to Denver.
Rumors of quarterback trades have already started for this year’s combine.
Friday, Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated reported the Chicago Bears have “some urgency” to trade Justin Fields, the 11th-overall pick in 2021 and that “the bones of the trade will be set next week (at the combine).”
Geno Smith math
Because of all that’s new in Seattle now — new coaches, new playbooks, Schneider, not Carroll, now having final football say — speculation is the Seahawks could be listening to trade offers for Geno Smith.
He’s played in the last two Pro Bowls since replacing Wilson.
Smith’s $12.7 million base salary for 2024 became guaranteed this month. Friday, the Seahawks renegotiated with Smith, who turns 34 this year, to convert half of his $9.6 million roster bonus that had been due next month into a signing bonus. That lowers Smith’s salary-cap charge by $4.8 million, to $26.4 million, for this year.
It’s a handy savings for a team that was estimated to be about $5 million over the NFL salary cap last week.
That was before the NFL announced Friday the cap for 2024 is a record $255.4 million per team. That’s about $10-12 million higher than initial estimates, thanks for the league’s post-pandemic spike in revenues plus its new media-rights deals.
Voila! The Seahawks entered the weekend with just under $13 million in cap space, per overthecap.com.
The renegotiation on the second year of Smith’s three-year deal means the team would absorb a hefty cap charge of $27 million to trade or cut him this year. That and the fact he’s often played well despite no running game and an injured, ineffective offensive line for much of the last two seasons signal he remains centered in Macdonald’s and Grubb’s plans for the start of Seattle’s new era.
The dead-cap money for releasing or trading Smith in 2025, the final year of his $75 million contract, is down to $13.5 million with a cap savings of $25 million if that happened next year.
“He’s a competitor. He wants to be coached. He wants to be the best. It means a lot to him,” Grubb, his new offensive coordinator, said of Smith. “And just hearing his story and his growth as a player and a person is inspiring honestly.
“So, I’m really fired up and looking forward to coaching him and Drew (Lock) both. They’re both wonderful guys and they’re competitors.”
Macdonald also has said he is eager to coach both Smith and Lock.
Lock has been Smith’s backup the last two seasons. His contract has expired. Lock is eligible to begin negotiations in unrestricted free agency March 11. Seattle has from now until then to re-sign the 27-year-old former Broncos starter, who’s said repeatedly in the last year he wants to play — be it here or elsewhere.
This story was originally published February 23, 2024 at 6:47 PM.
