Field Gulls
For the fourth time in franchise history, the Seattle Seahawks are playing in the NFC Championship Game.
The last time the Seahawks were on the doorstep of a Super Bowl berth was the 2014 season, amidst the greatest run in franchise history. Seattle was defending its Super Bowl 48 championship from the year prior, once again boasting the league’s No. 1 defense in points allowed. This was the peak of the Legion of Boom era, with Pete Carroll overseeing a terrorizing unit that finished first in the NFC for the second straight year.
A few other notable names from the Seahawks’ 2014 coaching staff include future NFL head coaches Dan Quinn (defensive coordinator), Dave Canales (wide receivers), and two-time interim coach Darrell Bevell (offensive coordinator). All three were present for the team’s championship run in 2013, helping to maintain a degree of stability within Seattle’s coaching ranks for the ensuing title defense.
While we are on the topic of 2014, let’s dive into where some of the core members of the 2025 Seahawks coaching staff were 11 years ago and how they got to where they are now.
Currently the second youngest head coach at 38 years of age, Mike Macdonald was just 27 in 2014. At the time, Macdonald had just ended a three-year stint with his alma mater, spending some time on Mark Richt’s staff at the University of Georgia. Thus, 2014 marked the start of Macdonald’s NFL coaching career, serving under John Harbaugh as an intern for the Baltimore Ravens. That year, the Ravens were one win away from the conference title game, blowing a two-score lead against the eventual champion New England Patriots in the Divisional Round.
Over the next several years, Macdonald was a defensive assistant under coordinators Dean Pees (2015-17) and Wink Martindale (2018-20), working as a defensive backs coach for a time before switching to linebackers under Martindale. Macdonald left Baltimore in 2021, joining his head coach’s younger brother at the University of Michigan as the program’s defensive coordinator. While in Ann Arbor, Macdonald oversaw a Wolverines unit that finished eighth out of 130 FBS schools in points allowed, helping Michigan to the No. 2 spot in the College Football Playoff.
Macdonald returned to the Ravens for two more seasons, succeeding Martindale as DC. In 2023, Macdonald’s defense allowed the fewest points by any team, which guided Baltimore to a 13-4 finish and an AFC Championship appearance, causing a multitude of Ravens fans to wonder why the team let him go at season’s end.
Like Macdonald, Klint Kubiak was also in the midst of his first job as an NFL coach in 2014. Also 27 at the time, Kubiak had recently spent three years as an assistant at Texas A&M, working towards his master’s degree as the school was leaving the Big 12 for the SEC.
In 2013, Kubiak was hired by the Minnesota Vikings as an offensive quality control coach under OC Bill Musgrave. After a...
