Mike Macdonald, ‘chasing edges’: Seahawks’ prep for New England includes sleep specialists

They reviewed film of Rhamondre Stevenson’s plowing running.

They studied how New England’s defense, much like their own, switches and presents different alignments to confuse offenses.

And also to prepare for their game Sunday against the Patriots (1-0) in Foxborough, Massachusetts, the Seahawks (1-0) learned from the study of...

Sleep specialists?

Yes. It’s more of what new coach Mike Macdonald often describes as “chasing edges.” That is, competitive edges. The small details that Macdonald believes, stacked atop each other, can make a big difference between this new-era Seahawks season being a success or a failure.

This is the first road trip with Macdonald, 37, as Seattle’s head coach. The youngest head man in the NFL was having the Seahawks fly to New England Friday, two days before the game (Sunday, 10 a.m.., channel 13).

That is following the successful lead of his predecessor, Pete Carroll.

It is standard for NFL teams to fly into a city the day before a road game. That’s been true for west-coast teams, though no team is further flung from the rest of the league with longer road trips than Seattle, in the far upper left of the U.S.

Carroll’s two-days-early approach to Eastern and Central Time Zone games worked. For decades the Seahawks lost most of their 10 a.m. Pacific Time Sunday kickoffs. After Carroll arrived as coach in 2010, Seattle went 24-11 in 10 a.m. PT games. That includes winning 16 of the last 21. The Seahawks scored upset wins at Detroit each of the last two seasons in 10 a.m. Seattle-time games.

This is the first of three 10 a.m. Pacific games for the 2024 Seahawks. The others are at Atlanta next month and at the New York Jets to begin December.

Is the way Macdonald is traveling the Seahawks east inherited from Carroll’s winning ways? Or is it the result of Macdonald’s own studies on how to do it best?

It’s both.

“We’ve had a lot of success going east,” Macdonald said this week of the Seahawks of years past, “and there’s been some research into it, too.

“A lot of it actually is in relation to sleep, believe it or not. We talked about it to the team (Wednesday).

“We had sleep specialists come in and try to be thorough in that approach.

“A lot of it’s what we’ve done here in the past. We’ve built off of that.”

Seahawks’ sleep

As Carroll did from 2010-24, Macdonald had the Seahawks practice at team headquarters in Renton early Friday afternoon, as usual. Then they were boarding buses then their plane for their flight east.

This season the team has a new charter plane, all wide-body, first-class-style seats.

They left Seattle on a five-hour flight late in the afternoon. The Seahawks arrived at their team hotel in downtown Providence at midnight early Saturday morning. The idea is to keep the players on approximately the same sleep schedule going to bed at the same body time as if they were still in Seattle, say 10 or 11 p.m. (1 or 2 a.m. New England time)

“Yeah, keep them (on) West Coast time,” Macdonald said.

The team was to get up relatively late Saturday morning and have a walkthrough practice plus the standard position and team meetings the day before a game. They’ll get up earlier Sunday for breakfast and buses to Gillette Stadium for the 1 p.m. Eastern Time kickoff.

Then, as usual, the team will depart from the stadium directly to the airport after the game to fly home Sunday evening. They will be back in Seattle mid to late Sunday night.

The players will have Monday off. They will begin Tuesday preparing to play the Miami Dolphins (1-1) at Lumen Field next Sunday, Sept. 22.

Seahawks’ new New England home

The Seahawks did not fly to Boston Friday, as many teams do when playing at the Patriots. They flew to Providence, Rhode Island, south of Sunday’s game site. That’s where their hotel is for Sunday’s game, 20 miles away in the Boston far-southwest suburb of Foxborough.

The last time the Seahawks played at the Patriots, in 2016 (they won in a Sunday night game), Carroll had them staying in a hotel in the Boston suburb of Quincy, south of the city. Quincy is north of Providence and about the same distance to the stadium in Foxborough, but has the Boston suburban traffic and sprawl.

That’s one subtle change to how Macdonald is traveling the Seahawks compared to how Carroll did it.

Providence is presumably where the Baltimore Ravens stayed when they played the Patriots in Foxborough four times in the nine years Macdonald was an assistant to head coach John Harbaugh. That included in the 2022 season, the first of two years Macdonald was the Ravens’ defensive coordinator before the Seahawks hired him to replace Carroll this January.

Many of the practicing, training, messaging and off-the-field scheduling these Seahawks are doing this season are similar to what Macdonald knows from growing up as an NFL coach under Harbaugh in Baltimore.

“There’s some other things going on too,” Macdonald said this week of his Seahawks traveling east, “but the main gist of it’s going to stay the same.”