PALM BEACH, Fla.—When Mike Macdonald began his coaching career at Cedar Shoals High School, a college student coaching high school freshmen, he learned from his head coach, Xarvia Smith a lesson about expectations that has stuck with him throughout his coaching journey, all the way to his job as the head coach of the Seahawks.

If you're going to bother playing games, and doing all the work that goes into preparing for them, then you should expect to win them.

Which is why Macdonald, without hesitation, said his goal for this year—and any other year for that matter—is to reach the pinnacle of his sport.

"I want to win the Super Bowl," Macdonald said Tuesday at the NFL Annual Meeting. "That's the expectation, man. Every time you step on the field, your expectation is to win. When I was a high school coach, our head coach, Xarvia Smith, got the staff together in the summer and he's like, 'Hey, write down what you think our record is going to be this year.' And guys would turn in like 8-2 or 7-3, 9-1 or whatever. And to those people, he was like, 'What games are we going to lose so we can just go ahead and not play those games?' So if you go into this whole process not expecting to win, you're not doing it the right way."

The Seahawks will look different this season, particularly on offense having made changes at offensive coordinator, quarterback and receiver, but the core principles Macdonald is trying to instill in the team don't change, and it will be up to him and the coaching staff to mold this year's roster into a championship-caliber team.

"Right now, we're preaching tough and connected," Macdonald said. "So how do we build a tough football team that goes through people, not around them, and how do we become the most connected team in the league? That's what we're shooting for."

The Seahawks are excited about what offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak and the rest of the new coaches on offense will bring to the team, and about what newcomers like quarterback Sam Darnold, receiver Cooper Kupp and defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence will add, but another reason for the organization's optimism is the fact that Macdonald and his coaching staff are, as general manager and president of football operation John Schneider put it a day earlier, "so much farther ahead" than they were last year.

"We're so much further ahead in knowing what each one of those guys really wants in a pass-rusher or a linebacker," Schneider said. "Guys were just getting settled last year, so it was really hard to be like, 'OK, we're going to trust this coach because he's coached that guy,' and we don't necessarily know that coach that well yet, and we're not all speaking the same language as well as we should be. So I think we're just much further ahead and able to compensate for some of those deficiencies quicker than we were last year. I'm excited about it."

Macdonald won't allow himself to feel like he's ever ahead; there's always more work to do, but he does notice the difference having been through his first year on the job.

"I understand why he's saying ahead; I never feel ahead," Macdonald said when asked about Schneider's comment. "I always feel like we're chasing, there's always a sense of urgency with what we're doing, but having the year together—again, these were all people we've never worked with before, this was all our first time working together for the most part. Every time you get through a new cadence part of the year, it's not the first time you've ever done it, where that was the case last year. So we have a foundational knowledge about how we want to operate, what's important to us, what type of players we're looking for. All of those things, we have some ground that we're standing on."

Along those lines, Macdonald was asked what he knows now, 14 months into the job, that he didn't at this time last year.

"I think there's a lot I didn't know i didn't know last year; there's still a lot I don't know that I don't know," he said. "It's not like I'm the expert after a year. But every time there's a new part of the year, it's not like, 'Oh crap, here we are.' It's, 'OK, we did it last year, this is what we learned from it, this is what we liked about it, bing, bang, boom,' rather than just saying, 'This is how want to operate,' then we kind of learned as things went along. So that'll be helpful."

When it comes to his defense in particular, Macdonald is expecting that unit, which finished the year strong after an inconsistent first half of the season, to pick up where it left off.

"I felt like we ended the year with some pretty good momentum, so the expectation is that we can take advantage of that and build on those things. Starting out, you want to be like this the whole time," Macdonald said, holding his hand up high. "And then just be rocking and rolling come December, January, February… You're going to hit some speedbumps along the way, but make it more seamless in terms of how we grow it, but understanding that there's a lot of expectation on that side and we have a really high standard, so let's go pedal to the metal and make sure we're meeting all those things."

On the other side of the ball, the Seahawks won't have continuity from last year to this year, but because Kubiak is bringing with him several assistants with whom he worked in previous stops, Macdonald is expecting a smooth transition to a new offense.

"It's a little bit unique because of how many guys we've hired that have worked together, so I don't think it's a normal operation when you get a staff together, like we had last year on both sides of the ball," Macdonald said. "A lot of these guys have worked together, they speak the same language, it's been a really fun process. Shoot, I'm the one that's trying to learn and get the language down and things like that. It feels like we work well together, there's no ego in that room, a lot of great projects going on. It's exciting."

Macdonald is also enjoying being more evolved in the draft process this season, something he was more limited in last year as he built a coaching staff then worked with those coaches to build out the team's playbook. This offseason, Macdonald was able to attend both the Senior Bowl and NFL Scouting Combine, events he missed a year ago, and that extra time with the player personnel department should give Schneider and company a better understanding of what kind of players the coaching staff is looking for.

"I think it just mirrors everything else in our program," Macdonald said of being more involved in the draft preparation this year. "We have a baseline what we're doing; I have spent more time on the draft, our coaches have. If you think about where we were last year, a bunch of new guys in a room, like 'All right, hey, what are we going to do, how are we going to do it?' That takes a lot of time, a lot of conversation. We've worked through that, we're kind of past that point right now, so we're spending a lot of time on the draft."