Seahawks could have hired Bears' Ben Johnson instead of Mike Macdonald

SEATTLE — No one needed long to conclude that the Seahawks got it right in hiring Mike Macdonald.

What has also become apparent is that the Seahawks would not have gotten it wrong had they hired Ben Johnson when they went searching for a coach to succeed Pete Carroll following the 2023 season.

Macdonald and Johnson were reported to be two of the three finalists for the Seahawks job. Both were regarded as the NFL's next hot, young coordinator who was soon to be a head coach — Macdonald running the defense of the Baltimore Ravens and Johnson running the offense for the Detroit Lions.

Had things unfolded a little differently, Johnson could have been standing on the Seahawks' sideline instead of the Chicago Bears' on Monday Night Football at Lumen Field.

Had the Seahawks not gotten either Johnson or Macdonald, they might have gone with Dan Quinn, who was viewed as a leading candidate from the start because he was the team’s defensive coordinator for the 2013 Super Bowl champs.

The Seahawks hired Macdonald, and Quinn ended up in Washington after Johnson pulled himself out of the running for both jobs. A year later, Johnson got his head-coaching chance with the Bears.

The Seahawks got a late start on the hiring process after firing Carroll four days after the season ended, while other teams with openings had already begun interviews.

Since the Ravens and Lions advanced to conference title games that year, the Seahawks had to wait until each team lost to talk to Johnson and Macdonald in person.

Both were pursued by many of the other seven teams that had an opening.

In his interview with Graham Bensinger released on YouTube in September, Macdonald said he thought he’d end up in either Atlanta — he attended high school in the Atlanta suburb of Roswell — or Washington.

“At the beginning of the process I was really anywhere with Washington and Atlanta, because I was from Atlanta and Washington was right there,’’ said Macdonald, who had coached in nearby Baltimore for all but one year from 2014-23. “Steph’s (his wife) folks were Washington fans.

The Athletic later reported that Washington offered Macdonald its job.

When the Lions and Ravens lost on Jan. 28 in their conference title games — Baltimore to the Chiefs at home, Detroit in San Francisco — the Seahawks brain trust, led by general manager John Schneider, headed out to interview Johnson and Macdonald in person.

“We flew to Detroit on Monday afternoon (to interview Johnson), flew to Baltimore Monday night, had our interview with Mike at 9:00 on Tuesday morning," Schneider said the day Macdonald was hired.

At almost the same time the Seahawks were interviewing Macdonald, it was widely reported that Johnson had told the Seahawks and Commanders that he was pulling out of consideration for either job and would stay as Detroit’s OC for another year.

There has been debate since whether Johnson decided he didn’t want either job — he said later he wanted to get the Lions to the Super Bowl before he left — or had the feeling each team might be looking to someone else.

“Ben Johnson was not the head-coaching lock that people thought and his asking price spooked some teams, per sources," ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported.

As Schneider said: Macdonald “crushed" his interview with the Seahawks in Baltimore and both parties made immediate plans to fly back to Seattle where his hire was made official and announced on Wednesday.

Johnson agreed to a five-year deal with the Bears a year later for $13 million a season, more than the reported $9-9.5 million Macdonald is said to be making on a six-year contract.

One other thing to consider: Because of a quirk in the interview rules and the Seahawks' late start on their search, they had conducted a virtual interview with Johnson before meeting in person but had not done one with Macdonald.

Had the Lions lost and the Ravens won would the Seahawks have waited until after the Super Bowl to talk to Macdonald?

On the day the hire was made, Schneider said the Seahawks were willing to wait Macdonald out, while hedging just a bit.

“Yeah, the reputation (of Macdonald) was really strong," he said. “I can't tell you like 100 percent, but the reputation was so strong. (But) we didn't have to get there. I don't have to answer that question, because we didn't have to get there."

Whether the Seahawks and Johnson might have come to a deal if they hadn’t wanted to wait for Macdonald — and had never conducted the interview that he "crushed" — will remain a fun little mystery.

What isn’t a question is that neither Macdonald nor the Seahawks have regrets about how it played out.

“If I had gotten any of those (other) opportunities I don’t think we would have had the success because of like the infrastructure we had in Seattle," Macdonald told Bensinger. “… Seattle definitely ended up being the best opportunity for me.

Monday likely won't be the last time the two will meet as the 40-year-old Johnson and 39-year-old Macdonald appear likely to be coaching NFL teams for a long time.

About as quickly as Macdonald righted the ship in Seattle — and led the franchise to the promised land of its second Super Bowl title last February — Johnson has gotten the Bears turned around.

After inheriting the mess that was the 2024 Bears — who went 5-12 and fired Matt Eberflus in November — Johnson led Chicago to an 11-6 record in 2025 and a wild-card playoff win over Green Bay before a tight loss to the Rams in the divisional round.

Appearing to show that was no fluke, the Bears are 5-2 as they come to Seattle despite an injury to starting QB Caleb Williams that has forced them to start three different quarterbacks. Williams is healthy and led the Bears to wins the last two weeks at Atlanta and at home against New England.

Johnson has a 16-8 record in his first 24 regular-season games as a head coach, barely better than the 15-9 mark Macdonald had at the same point.

Macdonald said Monday he doesn’t know Johnson other than a couple of conversations at league meetings.

They have stood on opposing sidelines twice in recent years.

In Macdonald’s final season as defensive coordinator with the Ravens in 2023, Baltimore hosted the Lions and beat them, 38-6.

It was the worst defeat and fewest points the Lions scored that year in a season in which they finished top five in the NFL in points, yards, passing yards and rushing yards and advanced to the NFC title game.

It was the only time in Johnson’s final two seasons as Detroit’s offensive coordinator that the Lions were held under 13 points.

The following year, Macdonald’s first as the Seahawks coach and in his fourth game, the Lions — with Johnson in his final year as OC — beat the Seahawks, 42-29, in Detroit on a Monday night. That remains the most points allowed with Macdonald as coach.