Macdonald is no Dan Campbell, but early on he appears to be more aggressive on fourth down than Pete Carroll.
One of the storylines for Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald in his first season was how he’d approach fourth downs compared to his predecessor, Pete Carroll.
Early returns suggest that Macdonald isn’t ‘Must-Go’ Mike, but he’s at least shown more of a willingness to leave his offense on the field on fourth down than Pete.
If you go by FTN Fantasy’s Aggressiveness Index, Macdonald is 20th out of 33 qualifying coaches for the 2024 season. This is prefaced by noting the Aggressiveness Index is not the same as the rbsdm.com metric of measuring how often teams go for it on fourth downs when they should.
Here’s their explanation:
Aggressiveness Index is a stat we introduced at our old site that measures how often NFL head coaches go for it on fourth down. We compare this not to when coaches should go for it based on EPA modeling but rather when coaches actually do go for it based on NFL history. Our current AI numbers use a baseline built with coach decisions since 2018, since that was a year that going for it on fourth down jumped leaguewide.
Macdonald’s expected attempts was 13.9 and his actual attempt total was 13. Obviously the Seahawks went for it 19 times on the season, so this is leaving out the obvious situations like a two-minute drill in the fourth quarter. If you went by win probability gained/lost, Macdonald was fairly aggressive.
Last season, Carroll’s AI of 9.82 ranked 25th out of 35 coaches, marking a return to a more conservative approach after showing some level of change in 2022. Carroll’s fourth down decisions were subject to heavy criticism toward the end of his Seahawks tenure.
Topping the Aggressiveness Index was Dan Campbell, to the surprise of absolutely no one. Sean McDermott was right behind Campbell, Brian Daboll and Raheem Morris were also in the top five. Andy Reid, Kevin O’Connell, Kyle Shanahan, Jim Harbaugh, and the fired Jerod Mayo were at the bottom of the chart.
One thing we can conclude is that there is no evidence that a “defensive-minded” coach or a coach from a defensive background is any more or less aggressive than someone from an offensive background. If we followed that reasoning, then Messrs Reid, O’Connell, and Shanahan, three widely praised offensive minds, should be higher up the index, while Raheem Morris and McDermott should be at the bottom.
Next up for Macdonald is having an offense that is good enough to convert fourth downs at a higher rate than 52.6%, which was the Seahawks’ statistic for 2024.