Socci’s View: New coaches, ‘old-school’ styles collide when Seattle visits Foxborough on Sunday
The new head coach is in the center of a joyous locker room, not much older than many of the players in his audience, as he praises them for the weeks-long work they put into the just-concluded win that opened their season and his career.
Today, he tells them, they were the more physical, better conditioned team. They controlled the line of scrimmage. They ran it on offense. They were unbending and unbreaking on defense.
How they feel in this moment is a payoff for the past month. How they feel should be enough to give more in months ahead, when more will be demanded of them.
His message is clear. Yes, it’s only one game. But it’s one to build on. Let’s stack more like it, starting next week.
A scene out of Cincinnati, set in the visitor’s locker room following the Patriots’ 16-10 victory in Jerod Mayo’s head-coaching debut? Or Seattle, about three hours later in the home locker room, after the Seahawks earned Mike Macdonald’s first win, 26-20 over Denver?
Both, actually.
This Sunday at 1 p.m., the two youngest head coaches in the NFL, Macdonald, 37, and Mayo, 38, will take to opposite sidelines after taking over for the league’s two oldest, Pete Carroll and Bill Belichick, who coached their last games at 72 and 71, respectively. As two of the most successful coaches of any generation, Carroll and Belichick led teams to a combined 31 NFL playoff appearances, seven Super Bowl titles and two college national championships.
But in January, on the second Wednesday and Thursday of the month, Carroll and Belichick stood at podiums in different corners of the country, suddenly as ex-coaches, neither presiding any longer over a glorious football era. Carroll’s 14-year tenure had ended with a 9-8 campaign and his Seahawks missing the playoffs for the second time in three seasons. Belichick’s 24-year reign had been unraveled by a 4-13 finish to the Patriots’ third losing season in four years.
For their replacements, men roughly half their age, Week 1 of 2024 featured validating performances. Both Macdonald and Mayo, like Carroll and Belichick, have defensive backgrounds and, though youthful, profess an old-school, run-first approach to offense.
In Seattle, back Kenneth Walker III rushed for 103 yards, including a 23-yard touchdown run; while the Seahawks’ defense balled out, and bailed out veteran quarterback Geno Smith and rookie punt returner Dee Williams Smith was intercepted on the game’s second play before Williams muffed a second-quarter punt. The Broncos’ ensuing series began at Seattle’s 20- and 9-yard lines, yet they ended up netting just one yard and no first downs before settling for two field goals. Denver also scored on two safeties for a 13-9 halftime lead.
The Seahawks regrouped, strung together 17 straight points in the first 15:06 of the second half and held on thanks to a defense that yielded just 231 total yards and 13 first downs (the fewest by a Seattle opponent since 2020). Denver either went three-and-out or turned it over on 10 of its 15 offensive series.
“I feel like we just did what we normally do every single day, which is we run to the ball, we give relentless effort, we tackle well,” safety Rayshawn Jenkins told Seattle-area reporters on Wednesday. “We practice our tackling, I want to say, almost every day we’re out there. We’ve got some form of tackling circuit or tackling drill.”
Seahawks defensive coordinator Aden Durde expounded on Jenkins’ explanation.
“You really get what you emphasize,” Durde said in a mid-week press conference “So if you want to be a fundamentally good team, you emphasize the fundamentals. Mike (Macdonald) gives us the opportunity to do that within the defensive structure at practice. We make it a point, we keep working on it and we’re trying to improve. Those things, hopefully you see it and you keep teaching it, you see where it’s showing up in the game and you see areas of improvement, and you keep working on that.”
While his staff drilled daily to improve the team’s tackling, Macdonald, the former Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator, demanded that his Seattle defenders rally to the ball – everyone, everytime.
Gregg Bell, who reports for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., wrote on Wednesday of a scene in an August joint practice between the Seahawks and Tennessee Titans. After a run-stop on a short gain by his defense, Macdonald chided rookie draft pick D.J. James, who, according to Bell, was across the field, 40 yards away from the play.
“You aren’t like anyone else out here!” Macdonald hollered, per Bell. “You are the only guy not running to the ball!”
Two weeks later, James was Seattle’s lone 2024 draft choice waived on cut-down day.
In New England, those of us who were out at Patriots training camp have our own practice stories to share. One for me unfolded on the team’s first day in pads, setting the same tone the Pats’ defense reestablished from the outset in Cincy.
Contrary to recent summers in Foxborough, defenders tackled ball carriers to the ground; not just in goal-line drills, but in the middle of the field. That’s where undrafted Dell Pettus took on hard-charging running back Terrell Jennings and on a separate play, piled onto veteran tight end Hunter Henry.
Although Pettus’s hit on Henry was gasp-inducing – he basically jumped on Hunter’s back – it was indicative of the aggression he displayed all preseason, earning his spot on the opening-day roster as the only rookie free agent to make it.
That relative physicality of early August showed up again last weekend, when the Patriots’ defense put the kind of performance on tape that made Mayo – and, one imagines, even Macdonald – proud.
“I think if you look at every clip it’s about 10 or 11 guys literally at the ball,” linebacker Jahlani Tavai said on Monday. “That’s something that we preach about. That’s something that we demand every play, even at practice. We do our best to run to the ball.”
Tavai illustrated his point by citing safety Kyle Dugger’s TD-preventing punch-out with the Pats ahead, 7-0, relatively late in the first half. On 3rd-and-11 from New England’s 15-yard line, Bengals tight end Tanner Hudson caught a pass over the middle, six feet from the goal line.
Dugger was initially picked in man coverage by receiver Andrei Iosivas angling to the outside, but recovered in time to swipe at Hudson, who was only a step from a score. The ball fell to the turf and bounced to cornerback Marcus Jones, who was converging as well. Jones returned the fumble to the 18-yard line and a dozen plays later, kicker Joey Slye ended the first half with a field goal to make it 10-0.
“You saw everybody on our defense swarming to the ball to get there,” Tavai said. “I think it wasn’t by luck, it wasn’t by chance that we recovered it and got as much yardage after that.”
There were also a few instances where the Patriots had no time to swarm to a Bengal, yet still prevented the slightest inch, let alone yard after the catch. Two of them were in a crucial span of four downs.
Cincy had driven past midfield to the 44-yard line midway through the third quarter. When Chase Brown caught a pass out of the backfield for three yards on 1st down, he was instantly decked by Tavai. The next play, a pass to Mike Gesicki netted five yards before he was dropped by safety Jabrill Peppers.
On 3rd-and-2, Tavai helped force an incompletion. Then on 4th-and-2, Iosivas caught a pass in the right flat for what figured to be an easy conversion. But defensive back Jonathan Jones bolted a good 10 yards forward to take down Iosivas a full yard short of the marker. Without hesitating, down judge Tom Stephan signaled a first down – for the Patriots.
Rerack Jones’s play, or Tavai’s, or check out gunner Brenden Schooler’s highlights leveling punt returners or Rhamondre Stevenson’s trail of would-be arm tacklers en route to his 120 rushing yards and you’ll see exactly what Mayo wants replayed in Week 2.
Or is it what Macdonald wants to see from his squad?
Both, actually.
Bob Socci is in his 12th season calling play-by-play for the Patriots Radio Network on 98.5 The Sports Hub.
