Mike Macdonald is not known for guessing.
Around the NFL, the Seahawks head coach has built a reputation as a defensive problem-solver—the kind of mind that lives for matchups, tendencies, and answers.
That’s what made his response ahead of Super Bowl LX so revealing.
When asked how he would stop his own receiver, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Macdonald paused. Then he smiled.
“Can you put three guys on him?” he joked.
It landed as humor. It didn’t sound like one.
Smith-Njigba enters Super Bowl Sunday as the league’s leading receiver, and his playoff surge has only intensified the problem for opposing defenses.
In the NFC Championship Game, he torched coverage with 10 catches for 153 yards and a touchdown, repeatedly turning routine throws into momentum shifts.
This isn’t a hot streak. It’s a pattern.
Macdonald knows exactly what makes Smith-Njigba so difficult to contain because he sees it every day in practice. Vertical speed that forces safeties to backpedal.
Route precision that punishes hesitation. And perhaps most dangerous of all—a calm confidence that doesn’t rush plays, even when the game speeds up.
“You can allocate two people to him,” Macdonald said. “But he’s got vertical speed, too.”
That’s the dilemma in its simplest form.
Double coverage removes space—but it creates risk elsewhere. Leave him single-covered, and he wins. Shade help inside, and he beats you outside.
Press him, and he slips clean. Play off, and he eats the cushion.
The problem compounds when you factor in Sam Darnold.
Macdonald admitted earlier this week that he couldn’t believe Darnold was available in the offseason.
Rumors swirled that Minnesota’s front office paid the price for letting him walk after a 14–3 campaign. Seattle didn’t hesitate. Macdonald didn’t either.
“There’s a lot of things that we saw in Sam that we loved,” he said. “He’s been that steadying force. A resilient dude. A competitor.”
That steadiness matters because Smith-Njigba doesn’t need a quarterback to force-feed him targets. He needs one who trusts timing—and Darnold does.
Together, they’ve turned Seattle’s offense into something deceptively dangerous. Not flashy for the sake of it. Efficient. Relentless. And increasingly difficult to disrupt.
That’s what New England is staring at.
The Patriots’ defense is disciplined and physical, but discipline only goes so far when the matchup itself is flawed.
If Macdonald—a coach who spends his career designing ways to erase elite players—can only joke about stopping Smith-Njigba, it raises an uncomfortable question.
What’s the actual plan?
Super Bowls are often decided by who forces the opponent out of their comfort zone. Right now, Smith-Njigba looks very comfortable. He’s playing faster, sharper, and with the kind of momentum defenses hate facing in February.
Macdonald’s answer wasn’t an admission of defeat. It was an acknowledgment of reality.
Some players don’t break schemes. They stretch them. Bend them. Force coaches to compromise somewhere else.
As Sunday approaches, the spotlight will fall on quarterbacks and legacies. But beneath that noise sits a simpler concern—one that even Seattle’s defensive architect couldn’t neatly solve.
If you can’t stop Jaxon Smith-Njigba with one defender…
And you’re not sure two is enough…
What do you give up to survive?
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