Mike Macdonald coaching his 1st Seahawks season with a strong military influence. From Dad

Mike Macdonald looks military.

His short-cropped hair. His square jaw. His mostly stoic face and ramrod posture during games.

Macdonald sounds military, too.

This week he and his assistant coaches have been digging into ways during their bye week to turn around the skidding Seahawks’ season. Macdonald says he was seeking “force multipliers” for the 4-5 team. That’s something commanders on Joint Base Lewis-McChord say more often than “Army” and “Air Force.” Gen. Colin Powell had among his 13 rules for leadership: “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.”

That sounds like one of Macdonald’s rules for leading the Seahawks.

He talks about his NFL team constantly “chasing edges” and being on “the tip of the spear” in attacking challenges. That’s the talk of Army training, operations and doctrine manuals.

“I’m learning he has a very, like, almost military mindset,” defensive end Leonard Williams said during training camp.

“There’s this joke that we always say ‘Hooah!’ when he says something. That’s an Army thing.”

“Hooah!” is an soldier’s battle call throughout the U.S. Army.

There’s no “almost” to the 37-year-old Macdonald’s military mindset.

On his radio show with KIRO AM Monday, when the team’s rookie coach was asked what he told his Seahawks after their fifth loss in six games last weekend, Macdonald said this: “Chin up. Shoulders back. Frickin’ go to work.”

Yes, sir!

Turns out, the NFL’s youngest head coach is from military.

Hugh Macdonald, Mike’s father, is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Class of 1971. He played for Army’s lightweight (now called “sprint”) football team while earning a bachelor’s of science degree in applied science. Upon graduation four years before the end of our country’s combat operations in Vietnam, Hugh Macdonald was a engineer officer.

“In his class, the number for engineer officers who went directly to Vietnam (after officer basic training) was seven,” Mike Macdonald told The News Tribune on the edge of the Seahawks’ indoor practice field following a practice last week.

“My dad was, like, 50. He got stationed in Germany.”

Lieutenant Hugh Macdonald found Europe still widely wrecked from World War II that had ended 27 years earlier. The coach’s dad was part of the American military’s engineering efforts to rebuild parts of Western Europe’s post-War infrastructure.

That was a decade and a half before Mike was born, on June 26, 1987, in Boston. By then, his father had served his time as an Army officer and was in his business career. That career took the family of Mike and two older sisters, Kate and Maggie, to Georgia. That’s where Mike went to grade school. Then he was a baseball infielder, a golfer and an undersized football linebacker at Centennial High School in Roswell, about 20 minutes north of Atlanta.

He said his mother “has taught me if you’re going to do something, you’d better do it right.” His father instilled in him “integrity, humility and determination.”

Hugh Macdonald got a master’s degree from Boston University, and in his post-Army career founded SalesScope, Inc., a business-consulting company 25 years ago, when Mike was in middle school.

Mike Macdonald began his coaching career as an assistant at Cedar Shoals High School while he was still an undergraduate student at the University of Georgia. The schools are five miles apart in Athens.

Though he never saw his father serve in uniform, the younger Macdonald has always seen, felt and appreciated his dad’s and his family’s military discipline and ways of life.

“The first thing is just respect for our men and women in the Armed Services,” Mike Macdonald said. “I’ve been around that world for a long time, my dad being a West Point grad. A lot of my family — my aunt was in town this past week, she was a nurse in Vietnam, met her husband in Vietnam. My other two aunts were nurses in the military, as well.

“So, just an immense respect for those people. Protect our country and put their lives on the line.

“This is the top of the top in terms of teams operating at a really high level. A lot of takeaways that our team can learn from that I feel are valuable to apply to our world.”

For those reasons and more, the Seahawks made Macdonald their nominee for the USAA’s NFL Salute to Service Award for 2024. Each November, to coincide with Veterans’ Day, the league honors our nation’s military and service members with military-themed events at games. Each team nominates someone each year for the league-wide Salute to Service award presented at the NFL Honors gala the night before the Super Bowl in February.

The Seahawks’ nominee last year was linebacker Jon Rhattigan. He was the first West Point graduate to play for the team. He played three seasons for Seattle before the team waived him in August. Rhattigan, West Point Class of 2021, now plays for the Carolina Panthers.

Mike Macdonald brings in the military

Macdonald talked last week to his players about the need for “force multipliers.” It’s a term he and the Seahawks learned from members of a local military unit the coach hosted at a recent practice.

After the practice ended the players came over to shake the hands of the service members.

“Thank you for what you do,” more than one Seahawk told them.

In August, the coach brought to a training-camp practice the pilots and support personnel for the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels. That was during the fighter-jet team’s annual performance during Seattle’s Seafair Weekend.

“Sometimes, it’s really valuable,” Macdonald said of military members talking to his players and coaches. “We’re looking for all the things that are going to help us get better. I think if you’re bringing in top people that can help us and and kind of compare worlds and let us understand what it takes to be the team that we want to be. We’re always going to do those things.

“It just so happens that these are some awesome people that because of what we do on a day-in, day-out basis and the platform that we have, you have some really cool opportunities to meet some special people. That’s definitely a blessing for our whole team.”

It isn’t just all talk.

Macdonald also does military.

He stresses accountability, daily. Some Seahawks learned that the hard way this summer.

One day during training camp the team gathered as it always does around their head coach in the middle of the field to end a practice open to fans. Upon breaking the team huddle, some younger defensive players quickly walked directly into the team facility.

Macdonald saw this from about 60 yards away. He barked at a staffer walking into the building to get those players back outside. When those players came back out he ordered, loudly, like a drill sergeants to new privates, for the younger Seahawks to get to the field’s edge to sign for fans.

Macdonald had established day one of training camp that on any practice days open to fans all players were to stay after to sign autographs for them.

Why have standards if you don’t enforce them?

Why have practice when you can learn from an elite military unit?

Mike Macdonald takes Seahawks to JBLM

In June, all players filed into the Seahawks’ main auditorium for the usual morning meeting. It was another Tuesday. They thought they were going over film of the previous day’s organized team activities (OTAs) practice and preparing for another day of offseason training.

But Macdonald canceled football for the day. He told them they were boarding buses to go to JBLM, to visit the 1-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

Wearing their team practice t-shirts with their jersey numbers on them, Geno Smith, Devon Witherspoon, Williams, Uchenna Nwosu, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Jarran Reed, Jake Bobo, Boye Mafe, Rayshawn Jenkins, Byron Murphy, Noah Fant — the whole team — talked with members of the 1-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team. Members of the Ghost Brigade (unit motto: “Arrive in Silence”) showed the Seahawks players their training programs, and their weapons systems. The Seahawks met the soldier’s families. Macdonald spoke to everyone standing next to the unit’s tactical vehicles.

He smiled like he was among friends, and like minds.

Seahawks relating to the military

First-level sergeants in the Army, at the rank of E-5, are often 22 years old if they enlisted in the military at 18, or in her or his mid-20s if they enlisted later. The base pay for an E-5 sergeant is $66,600 per year, according to 2024 enlisted-pay scales from the Department of the Army.

DK Metcalf is in his mid-20s. The Seahawks’ wide receiver’s base salary for this year: $18 million.

How does Macdonald see his million- and multi-million-dollar pro athletes relating to military service members?

“Some better than others,” Macdonald said.

“I think once you start to see the interaction between the guys, it’s just like anything. You start developing relationships and you start realizing ‘Hey, at the end of the day, we’re a lot more alike than we are different really.’

“That’s a statement for the whole world right now.”

Command Sargent Major Dennis Kirk, at the pay grade of E-9, leads the 1-2 Stryker Combat Team. He helped organize the Seahawks’ visit to his unit in June. He told the team’s website football is big in daily Army life.

“Football means a great deal to me and a lot of soldiers,” Kirk told seahawks.com in June. “Often times the NFL was a break from going out on patrols.

“I remember on numerous occasions, coming back from patrol in Afghanistan. ...I hoped to gather around the one TV in the cafeteria and turning on AFN (Armed Forces Network) to watch a football game.

“It was a great stress relief.”

Macdonald sees the same link between football and the military.

“We’re not in war in any stretch of the matter, but there are a lot of parallels in what it takes to be successful. I think our guys realize that,” Macdonald said.

“I think it just starts from a spot of respect for those people.”

The first-time head coach, at any level, is using military examples he’s seeking to build more than a football team.

“It’s so easy just to get into the day in, day out, just focusing on the schematics and the Xs and Os,” Macdonald said. “We have a bigger purpose here of what we’re trying to build as a team. We’ve got big goals and high standards.

“When you see people doing it outside of our world and our bubble that we live in on a day in day out basis, I think one is just good for the guys just to see what else is out there throughout the world and understand what it takes for the people that protect us on a daily basis.

“So, it’s all good. It’s all positive. It’s great stuff.”