The new coach of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks is a University of Georgia alum who, in 2008 and 2009, was an assistant coach at Cedar Shoals High School in Athens. Mike MacDonald also worked as a grad assistant under former Bulldog coach Mark Richt. MacDonald, at 36 years old, becomes the youngest coach in the NFL.
From the Associated Press…
It was a defensive-centric head coach that brought the Seattle Seahawks their only Super Bowl title.
The Seahawks are hoping a newer — albeit much younger — version can return them to the elite of the NFL after hiring Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald as their new head coach on Wednesday.
Macdonald, 36, arrives in Seattle as the youngest head coach in the league and half the age of the man he’s replacing — Pete Carroll who was let go after 14 seasons in charge during the most successful run in franchise history.
Macdonald spent the past two years running Baltimore’s defense, including this past season when the Ravens finished with the NFL’s best regular-season record and reached the AFC championship game before losing to Kansas City.
This will be the first head coaching position at any level for Macdonald. But he’s been surrounded by successful coaches as he moved up the ranks, starting with an extended run on the staff of John Harbaugh in Baltimore before spending a season on now-Chargers’ coach Jim Harbaugh’s staff in college at Michigan.
Seattle made it clear that Macdonald was one of its top candidates when it didn’t move forward on a hire prior to the conference championship games. Dallas defensive coordinator Dan Quinn seemed a clear front-runner because of his past connections to Seattle. But the longer the Seahawks went without moving ahead with Quinn, the more it became obvious there were other options being considered.
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