Details emerge on Seahawks Super Bowl plans. Mike Macdonald has 1st-time choices

The food trucks, the staple of “Victory Mondays,” were back outside the team building.

Inside the Virginia Mason Athletic Center, players were meeting with their coaches and going over film of the previous day’s game. Aching guys were in training room getting treatment.

Just another Monday following yet another win for the 16-3 Seahawks, right?

Yeah, right.

It’s almost Febuary. These Seahawks are doing what only three other teams in the franchise’s 50-year history are doing.

They are going to the Super Bowl.

So this was no ordinary Monday. This is no ordinary week. No matter how much coach Mike Macdonald will try to make it seem like one for his NFC-champion players.

“Well, I think that’s part of the message this week with the guys, is there is going to be a lot that is under our control that we can keep it within our process — but there will be some things that are going to be different. That’s OK,” Macdonald said a day after Seattle’s 31-27 win over the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC championship.

“But the things that are going to stay the same is our approach to every day, and what the intent of the day or the walk-through or whatever we’re trying to achieve that day is.”

A first way this week has already been different: The players, coaches and staff sat in meetings Monday detailing the logistics of travel, tickets and scheduling in the 12 days until Super Bowl 60 on Feb. 8 in Santa Clara, California. The Seahawks are sorting through travel arrangements to the Bay Area and who wants game tickets among families, friends and loved ones.

Each player on the 53-man roster of the participating teams, the Seahawks and the AFC champion New England Patriots, typically get two Super Bowl tickets out of each team’s allotment. There is an opportunity to buy at face value or ask/barter with teammates for more. “We have to go over some logistics, which is exciting,” Macdonald said. “But (it’s) also something we want to get ahead of so when it’s time for football we can be focused on football.”

The Seahawks are leaving Sunday. They are the visiting team for the Super Bowl. The Patriots as the designated home team will choose whether to wear their dark blue or white game jerseys (the AFC and NFC champions alternate as “home” teams for each Super Bowl).

The Seahawks’ Super Bowl hotel as assigned by the league is in San Jose, in the South Bay. That is far closer to the game stadium in Santa Clara by almost an hour’s drive compared to the league’s event headquarters in San Francisco next week. Monday night the Seahawks and Patriots have the Super Bowl Opening Night media event at the San Jose Convention Center.

The Seahawks will be practicing next week at San Jose State University.

This week, they are practicing at team headquarters in Renton. The players get their normal Tuesday off. They also won’t practice Wednesday.

“Off for a couple days, and start, like, a normal week cadence on Thursday,” Macdonald said. “I believe we’re traveling on Sunday.”

Quarterback Sam Darnold played the best game of his career in the biggest one of his eight NFL years Sunday. He completed 25 of 36 passes for 346 yards and three touchdowns, with no turnovers.

“He saved us,” Pro Bowl defensive lineman Leonard Williams said.

That was after his Seahawks defense allowed 479 yards and 27 points. It needed third- and fourth-down break-ups of Matthew Stafford passes into the end zone by Devon Witherspoon with 5 mintues left to keep from losing the title game to the Rams.

Darnold thinks he and his Seahawks teammates are well-equipped to handle this different week off before the chaos of the Super Bowl build-up next week in the Bay Area.

“That’s the beauty about this team and these guys in this locker room, this coaching staff, is we’re going celebrate (this). We’re going to celebrate (Monday) in the meeting, and move on.

“And everyone is going to look to see how they can get better for this game coming up in a couple weeks.”

Mike Macdonald consulting John Harbaugh

Macdonald was the Ravens defensive coordinator and defensive assistant for 10 years in Baltimore. That was before Seahawks chair Jody Allen, vice chair Bert Kolde and general manager John Schneider hired him to replace the fired Pete Carroll in January 2024.

Macdonald said Monday he plans on consulting John Harbaugh, his former Ravens boss, this week. Harbaugh just became the new coach of the New York Giants. He made logistical plans for the Ravens Super Bowl they won in February 2013.

Macdonald was in the middle of three years as a defensive quality-control assistant at his alma mater of the University of Georgia the season Harbaugh won the Super Bowl with the Ravens. Macdonald joined Harbaugh’s staff in Baltimore in 2014.

“I haven’t talked to John yet,” Macdonald said of his mentor, “but at some point I probably will.” This is the first time coaching in the Super Bowl for Macdonald and offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, both 38 years old. Defensive coordinator Aden Durde was a coaching fellow on the 2016 Atlanta Falcons that lost Super Bowl 51 to New England.

The veteran assistant coaches with the most Super Bowl experience are assistant head coach Leslie Frazier, Macdonald’s sage confidant, offensive line coach John Benton and run-game coordinator Rick Dennison. Frazier won Super Bowl 20 as a defensive back with the 1985 Chicago Bears. He was assistant head coach in Indianapolis when the Colts won the Super Bowl at the end of the 2006 season.

Dennison was the special-teams coach for the Super Bowl-champion Broncos’ consecutive title seasons of 1997 and ‘98. He was Denver’s offensive coordinator for the Super Bowl-champion team of the 2015 season.

Seattle’s veteran assistants are consulting with Macdonald this week on how much of the Seahawks’ game plan to install before the team leaves Sunday for the Super Bowl, and how much if any to have left to put in during the practices in San Jose next week.

Super Bowl game planning

The Seahawks coaches for their three previous Super Bowls preferred to install the game plan back home before they left for the big game.

Carroll to end the 2013 and ‘14 seasons had the entire game plans on offense and defense in before the Seahawks left for New York and Phoenix, respectively, for the Super Bowl. Carroll reasoned he wanted his players’ intensive learning to happen in their usual surroundings at home, like for a regular-season game and before the distractions of Super Bowl week.

For the same reasons Mike Holmgren at the end of the 2005 season had most, but not all, of the plan in before those Seahawks left for Super Bowl 40 in Detroit. He had the primary offensive and defensive plays and special situations such as the red-zone plans done before the team left Seattle for the game.

Macdonald sounds like he’ll approach it something like Holmgren did 20 years ago for Seattle’s first Super Bowl.

“Working through that. Definitely different schools of thought...in talking to some folks today, talking to our coordinators on how we want to operate,” Macdonald said. “Still working through how exactly we want to do it.

“Frankly I think it’s going to be something we’ll have to navigate as these two weeks present itself, too. “So the bulk of the work will happen this week and then go from there.”

Coach Mike Macdonald says on @SeattleSports Sam Darnold and Charles Cross are going to be sore from the NFC title game. #Seahawks will “be working through” Brady Russell hand injury, Drake Thomas shoulder injury.

— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) January 26, 2026