This was cool. Here's Cooper Kupp on Mike Macdonald how the #Seahawks HC organically made this a tight-knit team.
“Mike did not make OTAs easy. Guys were talking about that actually earlier this week, about how OTAs is in two weeks and that thing kicked our rear-end last year. And so it’s like, ‘You're going to come here and you’re going to work.’ But the way it builds guys together and then you lift each other up — once that was happening — then I knew we had something special.”
“He wants that. I know he talked about that last year. The guys had talked about his whole like, ‘He did this a lot.’" (*moving hands together*) "He did this a lot. And he's like, ‘I want a team that's going to be together.’ And so for him, I think one of the coolest things we did this year was a walk.
"Every four weeks, we would take an hour of our meeting time. We'd meet in small groups — we’d break out — and we’d have these conversations with guys and just talk. Some of it was football. Some of it was life. It was getting to know each other and getting to see how people saw the game, how people saw life, how people reacted to adversity. Maybe adversity that they’ve been going through. And it was so cool to be able to learn your teammates and be able to go through those moments with them.
"And then just be able to speak into people’s lives that maybe you don’t get an opportunity to just have a platform to do that. Mike put a priority on that — on us being able to know our teammates — and not just know their names or where they played football at. But know their families, know what they've gone through and where they really come from.”
I had to sit through:
Super Bowl 49
The falloff of the LOB
Late 2010s O-lines
Tre Flowers
2020 defense
The Russ trade
Shane Waldron
Ryan Grubb
Clint Hurtt
Geno Smith years
All to make it back to the top
I LOVE THIS TEAM #GoHawks