SEATTLE -- During his first training camp as Seattle Seahawks head coach, Mike Macdonald kept his players on their toes with what he called mystery situations.
For one period in every practice, he'd pit the No. 1 offense vs. the No. 1 defense in a specific scenario that would be unknown to both sides -- even offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb -- ahead of time.
A two-minute drill one day, a four-minute drill another day, the offense backed up on its own goal line, a sudden change in which the defense has to defend a short field after a turnover.
The work the Seahawks put into preparing for those situations paid off in their season opener against the Denver Broncos, which was bookended by two of them. It began with Seattle holding Denver to a field goal after a Geno Smith interception on the second offensive play, and it ended with a third-down conversion that closed out a 26-20 victory.
The first win of the Macdonald era was a testament not only to his defense -- which allowed only 16 points and 231 total yards -- but also to how ready he had his team to play.
"Holy s--- am I proud of everybody in this room," he said during his postgame speech, as seen in a video the Seahawks posted on X. "This is awesome. Congratulations."
That's when Smith jumped in and handed him a game ball.
"It was awesome," Macdonald said of the moment. "I accept it on behalf of everybody. It's special. It's obviously our first win. It's hit me and it's cool, but it probably hasn't hit me yet. Maybe in a silent moment, it'll come. But it was special."
The Seahawks will face much tougher tests than the one they got Sunday from a team with a rookie quarterback making his NFL debut in one of the league's toughest venues. Their upcoming schedule includes games against the Miami Dolphins, Detroit Lions, San Francisco 49ers, Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Rams, all before their bye in Week 10. But they hired Macdonald to turn around a defense that had gone from legendary during the height of the Pete Carroll era to lousy during its later years, and the opener was an encouraging start.
The first series set the tone. Seattle held the Broncos to a field goal despite taking over at the 20-yard line following Smith's interception. Dee Williams' muffed punt later in the first half put the defense in an even tougher spot -- with the Broncos recovering it at the 9 -- but it again kept them out of the end zone.
"It's a certain mentality you have to have in the red zone," Macdonald said. "Execution, things happen faster ... For our whole football team, including the defense, nobody batted an eye and stayed poised and did our thing down there. We got to keep the red zone defense rolling."
Macdonald and defensive coordinator Aden Durde had the right game plan against Bo Nix, correctly anticipating that the rookie quarterback would try to beat them with more short throws than deep shots.
Indeed, Nix's 42 attempts traveled an average of only 6.2 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, according to ESPN Stats & Information. (For context, that would have ranked tied for 31st as a season-long average last season.)
"AD, our DB coaches ... and Mike had a good plan, and we executed it," safety Julian Love said. "Play top-down and tackle when they check it down. [Bo's] a good quarterback, he's very talented ... but it's Lumen, a first game, first start, he's a rookie quarterback -- he's going to get the ball out quick. That's why you see a lot of checkdowns today, and a lot of great tackling, I felt like, by us. Then they tried to test the waters a few times deep, and I think we defended well. That was kind of the makeup of how we wanted to play this game."
Love and cornerback Riq Woolen both picked off Nix on deeper throws. Safety K'Von Wallace also forced a fumble that linebacker Jerome Baker recovered for Seattle's other takeaway.
Perhaps most encouraging, given how run defense was the Seahawks' Achilles' heel the past two seasons, was that they held Denver's running backs to only 3.2 yards per carry on 20 attempts.
"Get around the ball," Love said of Seattle's tackling. "Mike's whole mantra for our team is '12 is one'. You want to feel like there are 12 guys on the field on defense. All those checkdowns ... it helps when your brother is coming next to you. You make just tackles. That's just a mindset. That's just a swagger about us."
One of the biggest challenges Macdonald will face this season is the juggling act that comes with being a head coach and defensive playcaller. That means wearing the coordinator hat one minute and then making critical game-management decisions the next.
He faced one such decision late on Sunday.
After Nix's rushing touchdown cut Seattle's lead to six points, the Seahawks got the ball back just ahead of the two minute warning, needing a first down to put the game away. They got one when Tyler Lockett made a one-handed catch on third-and-6 from the 34-yard line, allowing Seattle to kneel out the clock.
On his Seattle Sports radio show, Macdonald explained that his decision to be aggressive and have Grubb call a passing play was based on the thought that Denver would be in a four-down situation either way if they were to get the ball back. With or without their final timeout, Macdonald figured, they'd still have enough time -- about a minute and 40 seconds -- to drive for the winning field goal, and thus there wasn't much sense in running the ball just to force them to burn their final timeout.
"We were like, shoot, it's basically the same situation," he told the station. "Let's go try to put it away right now."
It was a different approach than the more conservative Carroll often took, and it worked. Macdonald gave Lockett a game ball for closing out the win. Then Smith gave one to his new head coach.
"Man, I couldn't say anything," Smith said. "The whole locker room was just shouting. Everyone was so happy for him. He was holding the ball up. I mean, that was such a cool moment just for coach to get that first win. I know that was important for him."