9/21/2026
(Seattle, WA) The Seattle Seahawks are already back from Arizona fresh off a dominate 31-7 win over the Cardinals, Monday is Coach Mike Macdonald’s press conference to wrap up week 2 and beging to set-up next week’s game at Washington.
We’ll start off with Macdonld’s press conference followed by notes and takes from the Seahawks media team of John Boyle and Ari Horton.
Seahawks Head Coach Mike Macdonald Press Conference begins about the 4:30 mark
Presser Notes and Takes
Seahawks Media reporters John Boyle and Ari Horton offer their take-aways from this week’s press conference.
The Seahawks won in dominant fashion on both sides of the ball in Sunday’s 31-7 win over the Arizona Cardinals. The win was Drew Lock’s first start as a Seahawk since 2023. It was Nick Emmanwori’s first game back since ankle surgery. And it was also Christian Haynes’ first start, playing in place of guard Anthony Bradford who ended up on the injury report late last week. Haynes ended up splitting reps with rookie Beau Stephens throughout the game. Which brings us to takeaway No. 1:
Christian Haynes earned the start, but Mike Macdonald wanted to give Beau Stephens some “well-earned” reps.
Third-year lineman Christian Haynes made his first-NFL start on Sunday in place of Anthony Bradford who was dealing with knee and hip injuries. Rookie Beau Stephens also got a handful of reps, playing 39 percent of the offensive snaps on Sunday.
“I think there’s some flexibility in terms of how we want to approach the rotation,” Macdonald said. “We’re pretty happy with the way it came out. Sometimes it’s hard to control because, until a guy has a series or whatever, you don’t know how long it’s going to go. But I thought, I thought there was some really good stuff for both guys. Different things on, respectively on what we want them to work on, which is great. But to get an opportunity to go in and play really good football, when AB (Anthony Bradford) wasn’t able to go, I think, was great for our team depth, their offensive line depth. It was great for Beau being a rookie and getting experience, but, we’ll kind of monitor the situation with AB moving forward and kind of take it from there.”
The offensive line played a great game and helped the Seahawks to rush for 162 yards and one touchdown, including a 16-play, 10-minute drive where Seattle ran the ball 15 times on that drive, including the one-yard touchdown carry by AJ Barner.
The run game showed the Seahawks they have a “great opportunity” in front of them.
As mentioned above, the Seahawks had success running the ball on Sunday, so much so that the offensive line and offensive line coach John Benton received a game ball for the performance.
“We knew we had to be ready for the multiple looks that Arizona could give us defensively, both by what personnel they could throw on the field and how they packaged their front and movements and things like that,” Macdonald said. “So really, really great first step from our coaching staff to our players to be ready for those different looks. I thought for the most part we ID’d them and targeted them pretty dang good. I though our effort was tremendous. I think as an offense, I think we have great opportunity for growth to really just get the one more block on special teams like, ‘Hey, you’re a block away. Everyone’s at the point of attack all the time. We have the right mentality. I’ll tell you that on offense. I think the guys want that. It’s just, I think when you watch the tape, there’s a hunger there for more explosive runs, which is really cool. We got a great opportunity in front of us.”
Michael Dickson and the punt team have been “tremendous” to start the season.
Two games into the season, the Seahawks have punted nine times, and have yet to yield a single return yard. That takes not just a talented punter, which Dickson definitely is, but also a great coverage team that can either be down field to make a tackle, or to force a returner to make a fair catch. Dickson is currently averaging 45.7 yards per punt, which, given the lack of returns, is also his NFC-leading net average, and five of his nine punts have been downed or gone out of bounds inside the 20, while none have gone for touchbacks.
“Tremendous,” Macdonald said when asked about Dickson. “You can’t (over)state how important it is. He’s tremendous, but it’s also the whole unit. It’s getting our protections right when they want to rush us, when we’re singled up by a gunner, being able to get down the field, when we’re getting viced, being able to work through some of those things, some of the mechanics we have with our punt team of directional punts and things like that. Michael’s the driving force behind it. His talent obviously—it says a lot in terms of being able to pin guys deep and things like that, hitting different types of balls—but our punt coverage unit right now is operating at a high level, and we expect that to continue.”
Jarran Reed continues to do “pretty high-level stuff” in Year 11.
Veteran defensive tackle Jarran Reed had one of Seattle’s two sacks in Sunday’s win as well as, according to NFL Next Gen Stats, a team-high four pressures, but his impact on the defense goes far beyond what showed up on the stat sheet on any given Sunday. Reed, Macdonald noted, stands out as a leader even a in defensive line group full of talented and accomplished veterans.
“He’s probably the heartbeat of our defensive line room, probably our defense,” Macdonald said. “We have a lot of great players up front, and there’s only four or five of them that can play at the same time, maybe two or three sometimes. So playing time is at a premium, and I think what we’ve created here is that all those opportunities are being competed for all the time, so that brings out the best of you. I think that’s what you’ve seen from J-Reed this year and last. He’s a physical presence, he can play multiple spots in the interior D-line, he’s a good game runner, he’s obviously incredibly tough, smart—he makes a lot of calls out there that go unnoticed that get us aligned and organized, which is really cool. It’s pretty high-level stuff.”
Mike Macdonald and company don’t talk about the 12-game win streak.
With the win on Sunday, the Seahawks now have 12-consecutive wins, including playoffs, which is good for the longest winning streak in franchise history. The last Seahawks team to have 11-consecutive wins was in 2005, during the regular season. While it’s not lost on Macdonald how impressive the stat is, the reason Seattle can even hold that streak is because of their mindset that has largely been shaped by Macdonald.
Macdonald has made it known he doesn’t care about outside noise he cares about getting better and “stacking wins” and “running it forward” and when it comes to the 12-game streak it’s no different,
“No, we don’t talk about it,” Macdonald said about the streak. “It’s a great stat because we haven’t lost, which is nice. I think one of the reasons we’re probably able to do it is because we don’t think about it. We’re really focused on what we want to do right now.”
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