Here’s how every Seahawks coach fared in their debut game

RENTON — Mike Macdonald makes his regular-season debut as Seahawks coach Sunday when they host Denver at 1:05 p.m. at Lumen Field.

As the other eight Seahawks coaches who came before — from Jack Patera to Pete Carroll — his coaching tenure begins with unbridled optimism and the unknown of what to expect on opening day.

Macdonald’s predecessor, Carroll, warned a few days before his first game in 2010, a home contest against the 49ers who went 8-8 the year before, not to read too much into the opener.

“It’s only our first opportunity,’’ Carroll said. “Much will be written that everything will be understood from now on after this first game, but we have a lot to grow and a lot to gain through the experience of getting into games and all that.’’

Still, temptation will beckon around 4 p.m. or so Sunday to make sweeping judgments about what the opener foreshadows for the rest of the Macdonald era.

Which makes it a good time to review the other eight Seahawks coaches and their openers and what those games said about how their careers unfolded.

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Jack Patera

Date: Sept. 12, 1976

Score: St. Louis Cardinals 30, Seahawks 24

Comment: This game came to embody much of the Patera era. The Seahawks were 13.5-point underdogs at home against St. Louis which won the NFC East the year before. It appeared to be a drab debut when the Seahawks fell behind 23-3 six minutes into the third quarter. Typifying the Patera era, which you never really seemed to know what would happen next — an upset win or an unfathomable bad-looking loss — the Seahawks used two Jim Zorn TD passes and a Zorn TD run to cut the lead to 30-24 with just over five minutes left and had the ball at the Cardinal 43 with four seconds remaining when a final pass from Zorn into the end zone was intercepted.

Mike McCormack

Date: Nov. 21, 1982

Score: Seahawks 17, Denver Broncos 10

Comment: McCormack’s debut was the oddest coaching in team history as he took over on an interim basis following Patera’s firing the previous month during the players’ strike. The strike and roughly two months of inactivity gave this entire season something of an asterisk. McCormack took over an 0-2 team and led the Seahawks to a 4-3 record the rest of the season, including a sweep of the Broncos, including this win at Mile High Stadium. McCormack also reinstated Zorn as starting QB before Dave Krieg for this game — and the rest of the year, as it turned out — and Zorn hit Steve Largent for a 34-yard TD with 47 seconds left for the win.

Chuck Knox

Date: Sept. 4, 1983

Score: Kansas City Chiefs 17, Seahawks 13

Comment: Curt Warner memorably ran for 60 yards on a handoff on the first play of the season, his career and of the Knox era. There was little else memorable about this one as the Seahawks rushed for just 50 yards on 19 carries the rest of the game in a game played in temperatures that reached 118 degrees at Kansas City. It was a game that hardly presaged the success of the Ground Chuck era to come. That would happen the following week when the Seahawks rushed for 196 yards and beat the Jets 17-10 as 9.5-point underdogs.

Tom Flores

Date: Sept. 6, 1992

Score: Cincinnati Bengals 21, Seahawks 3

Comment: This game accurately foreshadowed everything that was to follow in the three-year Flores error. Flores, who had been the de facto GM since 1989, took over as coach when Knox moved on, going back to L.A. to coach the Rams. Like most of the Ken Behring ownership tenure, it did not go well. Seattle took the opening kickoff at Riverfront Stadium and drove 58 yards for a field goal. But Kelly Stouffer was sacked six times as the rest of Seattle’s drives ended in punts (eight), fumbles (two) or downs (one).

Dennis Erickson

Date: Sept. 3, 1995

Score: Kansas City Chiefs 34, Seahawks 10

Comment: Erickson, an Everett native, returned home to much fanfare following two national titles at the University of Miami, with the hope he could clean up the mess of the Flores era. But this was when Behring was threatening every other minute to move the team. The Seahawks were about to learn for certain that Rick Mirer wasn’t the savior. K.C. was really good in the mid-90s. Still, hopes were high as the Seahawks opened at home. This game was a mismatch from the start as K.C. took a 34-3 lead before the Seahawks scored a TD with 2:52 to play.

Mike Holmgren

Date: Sept. 12, 1999

Score: Detroit Lions 28, Seahawks 20

Comment: Paul Allen made his first big splash, luring Holmgren to Seattle with a reported eight-year deal worth up to $40 million. Holmgren would eventually prove worth it. But all that was evident on this day was that he still had a lot of work to do in building up the Seahawks who hadn’t had a winning record since 1990. Detroit learned in late July that Barry Sanders was retiring, and his absence was one reason the Seahawks were listed as a 9.5-point favorite. But the Lions jumped out to an 18-0 lead at the Kingdome (the final season for that stadium) and never trailed. The Seahawks won eight of the next nine to get the Holmgren era off on the right foot.

Jim Mora

Date: Sept. 13, 2009

Score: Seahawks 28, St. Louis Rams 0

Comment: Mora couldn’t have picked a more forgiving opponent against whom to open as the Rams were coming off a 2-14 season and would finish 1-15 in 2009. On this 73-degree Seattle day, the Seahawks looked like they might be improved from the 4-12 record of Holmgren’s last season, outgaining the Rams 446-227. It would sadly prove to be an illusion as the Seahawks finished 5-11 and quickly decide they wanted no more of Mora.

Pete Carroll

Date: Sept. 12, 2010

Score: Seahawks 31, 49ers 6

Comment: Indicative of how bad off the Seahawks were perceived to be, the 49ers, who went 8-8 the year before, were 3-point favorites. Accurately foreshadowing what was to come, the Seahawks rose to the occasion to give Carroll a win in his first game, using a few big plays to overcome an early 6-0 deficit, including a Marcus Trufant pick-six. “I’m really proud of the start and excited about it but mostly because we get a win and we still have much to do and accomplish,’’ Carroll said. “I hope everybody had a good time and enjoyed it.’’ They did, and they would for most of the 14 seasons to follow as the Seahawks would beat the Rams in the final game of the year to take the NFC West at 7-9 and get the Carroll era off on a fitting foot. The 49ers fired Mike Singletary by the end of the season and brought on Jim Harbaugh and one of the best rivalries in Seahawks history.