PFF names Seahawks' change at offensive coordinator their best offseason decision

Muhammad Ali said everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. The same principle applies to NFL offensive coordinators heading into their first season in the league. Ryan Grubb found that out the hard way last year. Coming to the Seattle Seahawks from a successful program at Washington led by a potent pass-heavy attack from Michael Penix Jr., Grubb made a lot of noises about fielding a more-balanced offense in the pros.

However, when it came time to actually call a run, Grubb quickly learned that it's easy to say you're going to establish the run and much harder to do it when you have an offensive line this bad. Grubb abandoned the run early in the season and the Seahawks wound up putting an extremely heavy load on Geno Smith, who eventually buckled from all the literal and figurative pressure.

Heading into 2025, the Seahawks are once again saying that they're going to run the ball. This time they hired somebody with a proven track record of doing it, though. According to Pro Football Focus, Seattle hiring Klint Kubiak as their new OC was their best decision this offseason.

"Kubiak, a Shanahan disciple, did a nice job of creating offense for New Orleans last season when he had a viable quarterback. He was also the quarterbacks coach in San Francisco in 2023, which gives him some level of familiarity with Sam Darnold. If Kubiak can find enough functional offensive linemen in Seattle, he could be one of the NFL’s best coordinator hires of this cycle."

You'd hope that the decision to trade Geno Smith and replace him with Sam Darnold will actually turn out to be their best offseason move, but this one is just as important.

Darnold doesn't have as good of a supporting cast now that he had last season with the Minnesota Vikings, so the best way for the Seahawks to help him is to field a strong ground game. Different coaches have been taking about it for years, but it's been a while since it's actually happened.

Seattle's rushing offense will either thrive under the new leadership, or it will continue to wilt with largely the same personnel in the trenches they've had the last two seasons. If it's the latter, there will be case to replace John Schneider as GM, but that's a remote scenario no matter how bad the OL looks. That said, the shocking firing of Pete Carroll proved that ownership won't be satisfied with good-but-not-great results indefinitely.