The Seahawks aren’t playing well enough right now, but “we’ll get there”

Before meeting with the media Friday morning, Macdonald rewatched film of Thursday’s 36-24 loss to the 49ers and came away feeling mostly the same as he did after the game.

“Right now, as a football team, we’re at a place where we have really good things to fundamentally build on: effort, physicality, intent, energy, all the positives,” he said. “But there are too many things at the moment that are costing us football games that we can’t do. The takeaway differential, missed tackles and explosive plays on defense. Some decisions we make in the second leg are all of those things how we felt leaving the stadium last night.”

The message to the team after the loss, Macdonald said, was: “You have two options: You can give up and say, ‘Okay, we’ll never play again, never win again.’ Or we can go back to work in these difficult times and work through these things. And I know a way, and our team will know a way, and that’s what we’re going to do, having difficult and honest conversations. You need to optimize some of your systems and a lot of processes that lead to some of these outcomes. But that’s a bit independent. It’s all new people, but that’s the idea behind it.

Of course, defeat comes with frustration, some of which is captured by television cameras, but if those emotions don’t harm the team, Macdonald doesn’t see it as a problem.

“The guys are so competitive and there’s a team spirit and people are frustrated and my message to these guys is, ‘Hey, it’s OK to be emotional,'” he said. “We want to be an emotional team that lives on the line in these high-intensity situations, but let’s also keep our composure and stick together, which I think we do very well. So all of these ingredients are there and.” Right now it’s just about preparing it right and making sure we do our best.

“As frustrating as it is and as it hurts right after the game, it hurts. You feel like you’ve let the city down, you’re depressed. Then you watch the film (the feature film) again and think again about where we are and how we can stay in some of these games in which we probably shouldn’t be there, Absolutely, that’s a sign to be optimistic. At some point it’s going to go the other way: “Hey, we’re trying to finish these games with a score or multiple points at the end.” We can hang out with anyone, but right now we have to fix something at home.