The relationship between Mike Macdonald and John Harbaugh helped shape one of the NFL’s quickest coaching rises.
It also produced an early obstacle when Macdonald left Baltimore for Seattle.
Macdonald revealed in a new interview with Graham Bensinger that he wanted to bring several coaches from the Baltimore Ravens with him after the Seattle Seahawks hired him as head coach in January 2024.
Harbaugh, then Baltimore’s head coach, blocked the plan.
Bensinger summarized the exchange in a post on X, noting Macdonald was frustrated at the time. His website went a step further, saying Macdonald specifically recalled Harbaugh refusing to let him take members of the Ravens’ defensive staff.
Two years later, after Seattle’s Super Bowl run, Macdonald views the forced separation as part of what pushed him to build the Seahawks in his own image.
Harbaugh Blocked Macdonald From Bringing Ravens Assistants
Macdonald’s ties to Harbaugh ran deep before Seattle came calling.
He spent nine of the 10 seasons before his Seahawks move in Baltimore, beginning as a coaching intern in 2014 and eventually becoming Harbaugh’s defensive coordinator in 2022.
The lone year away came in 2021, when Macdonald coordinated the defense at Michigan under Jim Harbaugh.
Bensinger’s site says Macdonald recalled his frustration with John Harbaugh for keeping Baltimore’s defensive coaches in place.
Yet Macdonald also expressed gratitude for the opportunity Harbaugh gave him and pushed back on the idea that he failed to receive enough credit during his Ravens tenure.
That history made the break more complicated than a routine job change.
“I was John’s guy that now doesn’t have John anymore,” Macdonald said while discussing the uncertainty he felt after moving to Seattle.
Macdonald also explained that, while running Baltimore’s defense, he viewed his job through the lens of building the unit Harbaugh wanted.
Once he became a head coach, the typical structure around him disappeared. He had to decide what a Mike Macdonald-led organization should look like without leaning on the same staff and system.
Seahawks Brought in Staff From Outside Macdonald’s Baltimore Circle
Seattle’s first staff under Macdonald reflected that clean break.
The Seahawks hired Aden Durde as defensive coordinator after his stint as the Dallas Cowboys’ defensive line coach, Ryan Grubb as offensive coordinator after two seasons at Washington and Leslie Frazier as assistant head coach. Jay Harbaugh, who had been coaching at Michigan, took over special teams.
At the time, Macdonald said the staff-building process was about finding “the right guys” to coach the team. Seattle eventually assembled 23 assistants around its first-time head coach, drawing from several organizations and college programs instead of simply recreating the group Macdonald knew in Baltimore.
John Harbaugh publicly remained bullish on his former coordinator. Shortly after Seattle made the hire, Harbaugh called Macdonald diligent and fundamentally grounded and predicted he would successfully carry his strengths as a coordinator into the head-coaching role.
The path still came with turbulence.
Seattle finished 10-7 in Macdonald’s first season after a 3-0 start and a midseason stretch in which the Seahawks lost five of six.
Macdonald has since described the challenge of establishing an identity independent of Baltimore and said he began to feel like himself again during the second half of that season.
The second year produced a dramatically different outcome. Seattle went 14-3, earned the NFC’s No. 1 seed and defeated the New England Patriots 29-13 in Super Bowl LX.
In the end, even though Harbaugh’s decision initially denied him the comfort, Macdonald didn’t need it.
Seahawks’ Mike Macdonald Reveals John Harbaugh Blocked Coaching Staff Plan