At one point last January, the two biggest coaching gigs in Seattle — if not the state of Washington — were vacant. Pete Carroll was fired from his longtime job at the helm of the Seahawks, and Kalen DeBoer had left his post as the Huskies football coach for Alabama.
It was the end of two eras, even if one of those eras lasted just two seasons. DeBoer’s Huskies played 28 of the most entertaining games we’ve seen from the Dawgs, as Washington went 25-3 in those two years and reached the national championship game. Carroll’s Seahawks, meanwhile, reinvigorated Seattle as a football town, as the team won one Super Bowl and reached another behind some of the most electric star power in NFL history.
In other words, the two replacements had Shaq-sized sneakers to fill.
The first was Jedd Fisch, the former Arizona coach hired as the Huskies’ new coach on Jan. 14. Fisch transformed the Wildcats from a 1-11 cellar dweller to 10-3 Alamo Bowl winners in three seasons, leaving Tucson with his squad ranked 11th in the country.
The second was Mike Macdonald, whom the Seahawks hired as their new coach on Jan. 31. Macdonald oversaw a Ravens defense that led the league in scoring “D” last season, and implemented a system at Michigan that carried over to the Wolverines’ national-title run.
Still, both were making major career moves with no success guaranteed. So how’d each do in his first year?
Let’s start with Fisch.
This was probably the less enviable transition between the two coaches, as Jedd had no real chance to recruit during the winter transfer portal. He was hired after it closed, and though he was able to lure some talent from Arizona, he had no real sense of how formidable his team would be.
He was open about this during fall camp, even if he did sport a T-shirt one practice asking “Where’s Washington?” when the Huskies were left out of the AP Top 25 preseason poll. As my colleague Mike Vorel wrote at the time, this was likely more of a motivational technique than a legitimate expression of frustration.
The truth is, anyone expecting any kind of championship buzz from Washington this year was kidding themselves. The team had seven players go in the first three rounds of the draft and experienced the largest roster turnover in program history.
A reasonable goal? Get to a bowl game and get those 15 extra practices to develop your players. Goal achieved — barely.
The Huskies (6-7) needed to get six wins to become bowl-eligible and did that in their second-to-last regular-season game. Much of this was due to the play of freshman quarterback Demond Williams Jr., who, to Fisch’s credit, replaced starter Will Rogers in the second half of that game vs. UCLA.
Of course, this does not excuse two games that the Huskies could have (should have?) had early in the season. The first was a 24-19 loss to Washington State, when Fisch called a botched option play on fourth-and-goal from the 1 that resulted in a 2-yard loss to seal the win for the Cougs. The second was a 21-18 loss to Rutgers that featured 69 penalty yards for a Huskies team that looked undisciplined throughout.
Coaching was an element — particularly against Wazzu. Still, a foundation was laid and now the building can begin.
Fisch’s first-year grade: B.
Macdonald is a little trickier. He was brought in to lead a Seahawks team back to the playoffs after they had missed them for just the second time in 11 seasons last year. More specifically, he was charged with reviving a defense that finished in the bottom quarter of the NFL’s total defense in each of the past three seasons.
He did the latter … to an extent. Few will argue that the Seahawks had some breaks early in the season with their quality of opponents. Then there was a six-game stretch before the bye week in which Seattle went 1-5 (including a ghastly loss to the Giants). Part of this was due to a turnover-prone offense that featured an insufficient offensive line and absent run game. But part of this was also due to one of the most porous run defenses in the NFL.
To Macdonald’s credit, he figured something out during the bye as Seattle rattled off four straight wins to improve to 8-5. And currently, they sit 10th in the league in scoring defense and 13th in total defense. That’s a massive improvement regardless of your schedule.
It’s just … anytime they played an elite team — Detroit, Green Bay, Minnesota — they got dominated on defense. The Vikings won because, one play after Byron Murphy II got called for a face mask that negated a sack, Sam Darnold hit Justin Jefferson for the go-ahead, 39-yard touchdown pass.
It was a fail for the defense, and as the loss (eventually) knocked the Seahawks out of playoff contention, it was a fail for the team as well.
First-year grade: C+.
Both Fisch and Macdonald have résumés that foreshadow success. And there were moments during their respective seasons that suggested more are coming.
In short — their feet can still grow. Until then, those shoes aren’t yet filled.
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