Canal Street Chronicles
The New Orleans Saints will head to Lumen Field to face the Seattle Seahawks in Week 3 of the 2025 NFL season. To break it down, John Gilbert and Mookie Alexander of Field Gulls join us to preview Sunday afternoon’s matchup.
NJ: Mike Macdonald is entering his second season as Seattle’s head coach—what’s the biggest difference you’ve noticed in his approach this year?
JG: It’s seems that it’s less that Macdonald has a different approach this season, and more simply that with the benefit of a second offseason in the building, he’s been able to better mold the roster the way he would like. It’s still very early in the season, but the players added in free agency and the draft have had a much larger impact early in the season compared to last year, with the 2024 outside free agent class one that the organization would likely prefer to forget.
MA: I’d say he’s more hands on with the offense this year. Even by his own admission as a rookie head coach, with defense as his calling card, he sort of delegated those duties to his offensive coaching staff, and the end result was offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb uncorking one of the worst Seahawks offenses in years. Grubb is gone, former Saints OC Klint Kubiak is in, but Macdonald is clearly more involved with the offense from a coaching standpoint, which traces back to OTAs and minicamp. I sense that Grubb was never a real fit for Macdonald given Seattle was so late in the hiring process, so Kubiak and his staff are more closely aligned with his vision of how he wants his offense to operate. Macdonald may be a coach from a defensive background, but in his second season I think he’s getting more comfortable becoming a true head coach and overseeing the whole operation and not areas he’s more familiar/comfortable with.
NJ: With New Orleans selecting QB Tyler Shough in the second-round of this past draft, I’m sure Saints fans would be interested to hear how Seahawks third-round pick Jalen Milroe looked throughout his first offseason as a pro.
JG: Milroe flashed athleticism during the offseason, training camp and in the preseason, giving rise to hope among fans that he could develop into a situational weapon for the Seattle offense. Through the first two games of the preseason, he flashed the athletic skillset that made him such an intriguing prospect, going 9-15 for 107 yards, with 56 more yards on the ground at a clip of seven yards per carry. Then fans got to see him in extended action in the preseason finale, and it was obvious that he’s a highly-athletic, developmental project.
That, of course, hasn’t stopped a small group of fans for calling for Milroe to start every time Sam Darnold has a poor play, but there’s a reason why Milroe has seen the field for exactly one offensive snap through the first two regular season games.
MA: Don’t expect to see Milroe much...
