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If Mike Macdonald’s ascent to one of many NFL’s hottest coordinators and a official head-coaching candidate feels meteoric, that’s most likely as a result of he has by no means embraced the artwork of self-promotion.
The 36-year-old second-year Baltimore Ravens defensive boss has consented to facet media interviews in current weeks largely as a result of he desires to tout the chemistry and cohesion of his employees, not as a result of he desires any extra consideration. He likes to name himself a “steward” of head coach John Harbaugh’s imaginative and prescient and can level you within the path of two dozen others who deserve reward for the Ravens’ success.
Nevertheless it’s unimaginable to disregard Macdonald’s impression on the AFC’s high seed, which faces the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs in Sunday’s convention championship sport at M&T Financial institution Stadium.
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Baltimore grew to become the primary protection in NFL historical past to guide the league in factors allowed, sacks and turnovers. The Ravens adopted up a landmark common season by smothering probably Offensive Rookie of the 12 months C.J. Stroud and the Texans on Saturday, retaining Houston’s offense out of the tip zone — its solely landing got here on a punt return — in a 34-10 divisional-round victory.
After the sport, Harbaugh known as his defensive coordinator into the center of the locker room for a sport ball.
Macdonald pushed inside linebacker Roquan Smith ahead.
The factor is, Macdonald has by no means been afraid to place himself on the market. Particularly in the case of soccer.
He was born in Boston however moved to Atlanta when he was about 7 years previous. His father, Hugh, had discouraged him from enjoying the sport. Hugh performed on the non-varsity staff at Military-West Level and frightened in regards to the harm dangers. However Hugh returned dwelling late from a enterprise journey one night time to discover a helmet and shoulder pads on Mike’s twin mattress.
“The subsequent morning, I requested him, ‘What’s this?’ He had determined to affix the junior staff,” Hugh mentioned. “So off he went.”
Mike was neither the most important nor quickest man on the groups he performed for, however there was no questioning his drive. Hugh filmed his youth video games and the 2 would watch them collectively and break down performs. Mike grew to become consumed with the sport’s nuances.
As a operating again and linebacker, Macdonald’s bodily attributes wouldn’t set him aside, however learning opponents’ tendencies gave him a head begin. When he received to Centennial Excessive College, Macdonald would break down movie of opponents and current his findings to his coach, Xarvia Smith.
“When he first met me, he tried to inform me that we would have liked to exit to lunch and hang around collectively,” Smith recalled. “I used to be like, ‘Mike, you’re a participant. You might be my participant. I’m not hanging out with you.’
“He simply all the time confirmed management. He all the time was ready to indicate how good he was.”
As a junior, Macdonald began getting stingers in his neck. His physician suggested him that he was at long-term threat if he continued to play by his senior 12 months, however Macdonald needed to exit on his phrases. After the swelling across the nerves in his neck subsided, the physician greenlighted him to play within the closing sport of the season. However on the final play of the final follow of sport week, Macdonald heard a pop in his knee. He tore his ACL. There can be nobody closing sport.
There would, nevertheless, be one final highschool hurrah. About 4 months after surgical procedure, Macdonald was sitting on the bench for the Centennial Excessive baseball staff. Macdonald’s coach was initially too involved for his security to play him. Macdonald begged him to rethink. Within the staff’s second sport, the rating was tied within the final inning and Macdonald received the go-ahead to hit.
“He took two pitches and put the following pitch over the fence,” Hugh mentioned. “He regarded like Kirk Gibson going across the bases, he had this large brace on his knee. It was fairly a second.”
Macdonald was a pupil on the College of Georgia when he known as Smith searching for a favor. Smith had not too long ago gotten the top job at Cedar Shoals Excessive in Athens, and Macdonald needed to know if he had a gap.
“Mike might be one of many smartest folks I’ve ever met in my life,” Smith mentioned. “I spotted if he simply discovered the way to work, he can be nice at this.”
Macdonald began operating the protection for Cedar Shoals’ ninth-grade staff. They’d six shutouts that 12 months.
“An superior expertise,” Macdonald mentioned. “I went into the scenario as a strategist. I preferred figuring out tendencies and anticipating performs. What I discovered is you’ll be able to take an individual from A to B. While you do this, if he did one thing as we speak that he couldn’t do yesterday, that was extremely rewarding. That’s after I was hooked.”
For 2 years, Macdonald dropped by the Georgia soccer workplaces on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, spending hours speaking with video coordinator Joe Tereshinski and hoping anyone would admire his persistence. Macdonald was placing the ending touches on a level in finance — he graduated summa cum laude — when he bumped into new defensive coordinator Todd Grantham at a Starbucks and took one closing alternative to state his case. Impressed, Grantham invited him in for a proper assembly, then instructed Macdonald there was a volunteer teaching spot obtainable so long as he received into grad faculty.
“I took out a mortgage and went to work,” Macdonald mentioned.
Macdonald labored at Georgia for 4 seasons, the primary as a volunteer assistant and the following three as a grad assistant. He broke down movie, labored on sport plans and helped run the scout staff within the final soccer schooling.
“When you could have guys which are actually sharp and may talk nicely and are onerous employees and put their nostril down and get to work, you’ll be able to see the place a man goes to have an opportunity to maneuver up on this planet,” mentioned Mark Richt, Georgia’s soccer coach on the time. “You need assured folks and also you need guys who you imagine are reliable. I believe there’s a actual consolation stage with Mike and the kind of individual he’s. He checked all the bins.”
Then he virtually walked away from the occupation altogether. At 26, Macdonald grew to become “disillusioned” by the job. His time as a grad assistant expired in 2013. A few of the politics had gotten to him, and a few of his relationships had turn into draining.
“The entire glamor of being a soccer coach was carrying off,” Macdonald mentioned. “I didn’t actually imagine within the course of and the folks that I used to be round. I didn’t see the good thing about what I had fallen in love with earlier than.”
There have been alternatives for him. Macdonald had a finance diploma and a grasp’s in sports activities administration. Hugh had all the time inspired Macdonald and his two sisters to have a plan after which ensure each choice was geared towards that plan. Hugh wasn’t in opposition to a profession in teaching, however the enterprise world will be awfully profitable for anyone with Mike’s intelligence and savvy, and Hugh needed to ensure soccer was the very best place for his son’s skills.
“I figured I used to be going to go see the world and begin working,” Macdonald mentioned. “It didn’t really feel prefer it was the correct factor to do when it was taking place, however I simply felt sort of pressured to do it. I didn’t need to take a job at Wherever State and go throughout the nation recruiting Johnny. It wasn’t on the trajectory that I needed it to be on.”
He accepted a $60,000 job in Atlanta working at KPMG, one of many nation’s “Huge 4” accounting companies. He had already signed a contract when he received a name from the Ravens. The earlier 12 months, he had utilized for a scouting internship with Baltimore. That wasn’t an amazing match, however Harbaugh was beginning a training internship program in 2014.
Macdonald knowledgeable KPMG that he would not be becoming a member of the agency.
Harbaugh has every of his assistants current a special facet of the week’s sport plan to the staff. It’s good publicity and expertise for younger coaches and creates a way of accountability for everybody on employees.
As a twenty-something whose enjoying profession resulted in highschool, Macdonald felt some preliminary apprehension about stepping in entrance of a room of NFL veterans.
“I simply bear in mind considering, Terrell Suggs is again there,” Macdonald mentioned. “Why on this planet would he take heed to something I’m saying?”
However these sport week classes in entrance of the likes of Suggs, a former defensive participant of the 12 months, helped Macdonald discover his voice. If he believed within the course of, he didn’t want to fret about presenting himself in a sure approach.
“I believe you come to the belief of, ‘OK, I’ve put plenty of work into this factor and I believe I’ve one thing (Suggs) can profit from,’” Macdonald mentioned. “If I’m making an attempt to be some man that I really feel like he’d resonate with, that’s not going to work. It’s onerous to be that individual all the time. Simply be your self.”
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That first 12 months in Baltimore, Macdonald shared an workplace with fellow Ravens interns Chris Horton and Eugene Shen. They broke down performs, labored on initiatives and helped out the teaching employees. A decade later, Horton leads the Ravens’ particular groups and Shen is the senior vice chairman of soccer technique for the Washington Commanders.
“We speak about it on a regular basis, the place we’ve come from to the place we at the moment are,” Horton mentioned. “It’s been a tremendous means of placing your head down, going to work and people issues will repay for you.”
In his lone season at Michigan, Mike Macdonald led a top-10 protection on a staff that earned a School Soccer Playoff look. (Robin Alam / Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Photographs)
In 2018, Harbaugh interviewed Macdonald, then a 30-year-old linebackers coach, for the defensive coordinator job after Dean Pees retired. Harbaugh finally employed Wink Martindale, however the alternative to interview finally strengthened Macdonald’s conviction.
“It was an amazing expertise to undergo and say, OK, if I have been to do it, what would it not seem like? What are your concepts?” Macdonald mentioned. “It makes you set up your ideas.”
He continued to organize himself for a possibility. He and fellow assistant Jesse Minter watched movie collectively and practiced calling the sport, continuously reviewing totally different offensive schemes and discussing the defensive response.
“You may inform straight away how sharp this dude was,” mentioned Minter, now the defensive coordinator at Michigan. “Some folks do the job that they’ve and do a very good job, and different folks do the job that they’ve and do a very good job whereas on the identical time all the time getting ready for the following job mentally.”
When Michigan had a defensive coordinator opening after the 2020 season, Harbaugh pitched Macdonald to his brother, Jim, considering Macdonald was then able to be in that position. He was confirmed appropriate. In Macdonald’s one season in Ann Arbor, the Wolverines had a top-10 protection, turned the tables on Ohio State, performed within the School Soccer Playoff and produced three top-45 defensive draft picks.
When the Ravens and Martindale parted methods in January 2022, Harbaugh introduced again Macdonald, believing the time was proper. Minter changed him with the Wolverines.
Issues didn’t get off to an auspicious begin. When the Ravens blew a three-touchdown result in the Miami Dolphins in Week 2 that season, ESPN analyst Rex Ryan, a former Baltimore defensive coordinator, mentioned the “new hot-shot coordinator is horrible.” However by season’s finish — and after a commerce that introduced Roquan Smith over from Chicago in the midst of Smith’s second consecutive All-Professional marketing campaign — the Ravens protection was enjoying at a excessive stage, ending eighth within the league in defensive DVOA.
They’ve been considerably higher this season, shutting down a few of the sport’s high offenses. Smith calls Macdonald a “wizard” for his capability to establish weaknesses and exploit them.
“If there’s one thing we’re not comfy with, he’ll throw it out. If there’s one thing we’re not comfy with however we need to work on, he’ll attempt to simplify it and make it to the place it does work for us,” mentioned inside linebacker Patrick Queen. “He’s very thorough in the whole lot he does.”
This isn’t the continuously blitzing, bodily pulverizing Ravens protection of yesteryear. This group’s aggression is extra managed and calculated, relying closely on deception and every participant embracing his position on a given play. It’s versatile, a number of and artistic, a lovely concord of scheme and personnel being studied and admired at each the school {and professional} ranges.
Macdonald believes strongly within the gamers being accountable to at least one one other. He has his 355-pound nostril deal with drop into passing lanes and his 190-pound cornerback blitz. He has onrushing linebackers set picks to present defensive linemen free runs on the quarterback. He preaches complete buy-in, however you gained’t see him admonishing a participant on the sideline. As a substitute, he usually stands stoically, his eyes both skilled on the sector or peering down at his name sheet.
“I believe there’s an ideal mixture of what you play and the way you play,” Minter mentioned. “I believe plenty of coaches lose that. For some folks, it’s all about scheme. For some folks, it’s all about effort and fundamentals. However having been in Baltimore, to me, it’s an ideal mixture.
“You typically hear the time period, ‘Play like a Raven.’ Meaning 11 guys on the sector enjoying collectively.”
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Macdonald has had 5 head-coaching interviews already and is awaiting a second with the Atlanta Falcons. Ravens followers are so involved they may lose him that they’ve taken to social media to jokingly impugn him so different organizations keep away. Macdonald cracked a smile when requested about these makes an attempt, saying his spouse Stephanie has handed alongside a few of the funnier ones.
Then after a fast grin, his sport face returned.
He’s by no means going to be the primary man within the room to inform a joke. His thought of breaking the stress in conferences is dropping a line from a Jim Carrey comedy. These are sometimes met with quizzical seems from gamers, reminiscent of cornerback Brandon Stephens, who chuckled desirous about his coach’s “tacky, lame jokes.”
“He’s just a little little bit of a soccer nerd,” Minter mentioned. “And I imply that as a praise.”
Possibly self-promotion is overrated.
One of many signature performances for Macdonald’s Ravens protection got here in Baltimore’s heavyweight conflict in opposition to the San Francisco 49ers, who host the Detroit Lions in Sunday’s NFC Championship Recreation. Each groups entered 11-3, however the Ravens pressured 5 interceptions within the Christmas night time tour de power, with Marcus Williams placing the ending touches on the 33-19 victory by selecting off San Francisco’s Sam Darnold within the sport’s closing minutes.
Macdonald stomped across the sideline and wildly slapped the hand of line of defense coach Anthony Weaver, an outburst notable as a result of it was so out of character.
(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; pictures: Todd Olszewski, Fred Kfoury III / Getty Photographs)
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