Mike Macdonald goes inside Seahawks’ decisions on 4th down

Sep 16, 2024, 12:19 PM | Updated: 1:28 pm

Seattle Sports

There are always plenty of questions surrounding first-time head coaches in the NFL, which holds true for new Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald.

Huard: A telling decision the Seahawks made Sunday

One of the biggest questions is how a new coach will handle the high-leverage situations in the game like whether or not to go for it on fourth down, play for the win or go for the tie. Macdonald and his staff showed a glimpse of how they’ll handle those situations during Sunday’s 23-20 overtime victory over the New England Patriots.

The Seahawks went for it twice on fourth down, but most notably elected to not go for it on a fourth-and-1, instead taking a delay of game and kicking a field goal in the final minute of regulation to force the extra period at Gillette Stadium.

The coach shared some insight to the decision-making process Monday morning on Seattle Sports’ Mike Macdonald Show. For a staff that also features a first-time NFL offensive coordinator in Ryan Grubb and defensive coordinator in Aden Durde, the process is still developing.

“We haven’t gone through these things as a whole staff, me personally as well,” Macdonald said. “So, you’re trying to do kind of the wisdom of the crowd – what you feel like is kind of best practices as you’re going through things, navigating things for the first time. But these things are going to evolve (as) we get a feel for how we’re gonna manage the game, especially late in the game, these fourth-down decisions. (There is) lots of stuff that you’re just going through and you kind of start to (figure out). … You just try to keep getting better at the things and then it’ll become kind of molded in our identity as we go.”

The Seahawks went the conservative route with the decision to kick and play for overtime rather than go for the win, but that wasn’t always the case on Sunday. They went for it on fourth down twice earlier in the game, coming up with a first down once and getting shut down the other time.

When they failed to convert on fourth down earlier in the game, it came inside of field-goal range.

“In hindsight, probably should have kicked it, but you can’t play this what-if game,” Macdonald said. “… You kind of learn from (it) and go from there.”

Macdonald mentioned that the analytics did slightly favor a decision to go for it during the tying drive in the fourth quarter, but there were other factors to consider that weren’t all accounted for. The head coach also used his feel for what had been going in the game to that point.

Before Seattle elected to kick the field goal, the Patriots stuffed a quarterback sneak from Geno Smith on third-and-1 to set up the fourth-down play. That came after New England had bottled up Seattle’s run game all day, holding running back Zach Charbonnet to just 22 yards on 12 carries in regulation.

“That’s that’s my job, right? Is to kind of figure out, ‘Hey, what what’s our plan for these scenarios? What do we have called? How have they been playing us?'” Macdonald said. “There’s a lot of factors going on there too. … Now if (the analytics are) super favorable and you feel like you got a good play, then I definitely want to stay aggressive in those situations.”

Listen to the full conversation with Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Tune in to the Mike Macdonald Show every Monday at 9:30 a.m. following a Seahawks game.