I am biased. Let’s get that out of the way from the start. Ryan Grubb was my first choice to take over the offensive coordinator position this season. I celebrated when he was hired. That optimism seemed well founded when the offense purred like a sports car during training camp. Geno Smith, D.K. Metcalf, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and others looked hard to stop, even for defensive wunderkind Mike Macdonald. The regular season performance has been like a sports car as well, capable of breathtaking moments while being unreliable enough to be in the shop half the time. Output has cratered in recent weeks, just as the defense found their footing. That has led to the spotlight shining brightly on Grubb. Figuring out if he is part of the problem or part of the solution is the most important question for Seattle the rest of this season, and it is far more complex than most want to acknowledge.
The rare college coordinator
Grubb is the only OC in the NFL who came directly from college without any NFL experience. Kliff Kingsbury made that jump a few years ago as the head coach and play caller for the Arizona Cardinals. Someone like Liam Coen of the Bucs came from college, but he had been an assistant for Sean McVay and the Rams prior to that.
It is rare for college coordinators to be hired as play callers in the NFL. This matters when trying to evaluate an OC because the game is considerably different between college and pros. The hash marks are a different width, which has meaningful implications for play design. The style of defenses differs, as does the quality of player. Grubb spoke recently about that being one of the areas he has spent time deepening his learning.
“As far as learning processes,” Grubb said. “I think that the coordinator families in the NFL and where guys come from and the different type of processes those defensive families so to speak have, I think that’s probably one of the biggest things because everybody kind of comes from certain trees. And so certainly evaluating some of those things and seeing what type of things people draw back to is unique to the NFL.”
It is normal to assume a learning curve for rookie players entering the NFL. Coaches do not get the same grace, but any evaluation of Grubb should try to see if he is learning and adjusting. People expect Mike Macdonald to be a better head coach next year than he was in his first year doing the job given he will have had a full season to solidify his approach. Grubb would almost certainly be better in a second season in terms of offseason planning, preparation, and alignment with the personnel department. Ignoring his unique path makes it more likely to miss a rising talent. Giving him too much leeway could leave you wasting years on a failed experiment.
Personnel limitations
Macdonald has been called a defensive genius. The Seahawks defense started off strong. It then collapsed into one of the worst units in the NFL for weeks. The group has since recovered and is playing excellent football. That did not just happen because Macdonald coached people up. He worked closely with John Schneider to makeover large portions of the starting lineup.
Multiple trades were made, all to address problem areas on the defense.
Grubb has had nothing added during the season. The closest they came was signing Connor Williams to play center during training camp. His side of the ball has also suffered the bulk of the injury issues on the team.
They started four right tackles, three right guards, and two centers. Running back Kenneth Walker III has missed multiple games, as has Metcalf and Noah Fant.
Macdonald correctly identified that part of the problem for their poor defensive performance was having the wrong people to run his defense. He gets credit for working with Schneider to address that in-season. Grubb has had no such help.
Assuming the front office got the personnel right the first time with Grubb would be naive. He made a comment that may have hinted at this.
“I think finding ways to build your team around the guys you’ve got are things that we’ve always been pretty good at,” Grubb said. “I think that we’ve tried to highlight those things and keep building around the players we have.”
It feels safe to assume he does not have the guys he wants even if he considers himself responsible for building around the guys they have. A full season with these players would make him more adept at identifying what needs to change and what should stay the same. The flip side is the further you get down melding the personnel to what he wants, the harder it could be to move on to someone else down the road.
All new coaching staff
Grubb has spent a lot of his career with the same head coach in Kalen DeBoer. That led to trust that can only be built through shared history of success and failure. There have been low points this season that he has gone through without that common background with his boss.
“I think that you have to trust your decision making early on and there’s a reason I took this job and the trust that I have in Mike (Macdonald),” Grubb said. “I think that that’s a huge part of any relationship, right? Whether it’s a working relationship or whatever. Certainly there’s built up reps, so to speak, with a guy like Kalen (DeBoer) when I was with him for a long time. So when you hit those bumps in the road, they’re easier to manage and get through. Certainly, this season has provided a lot of growth opportunities for Mike and I, and I’m thankful for that. I think the relationship has gotten stronger and the understanding of what we’re trying to get done as a team just continues to build. “
Macdonald is also defensive-minded, where DeBoer was an offensive coach. That has led to some culture adjustment that has been new for Grubb.
“It is definitely a first for me there,” Grubb said. “Coach (Leslie) Frazier and Mike (Macdonald) are definitely defensive guys. I think that it’s just perspective, honestly. At first, even way back to OTAs, I’d be like ‘Wow. I’d would’ve like to run 20 or 30 more plays in this situation and not been with the defense and things like that.’ How they look at things, sometimes I think defensively there’s more of a holistic approach to it versus sometimes offensive guys are just like, ‘Run as many plays as you want or whatever you need to do and you can focus more on that way.’ I think there’s give and take in both those situations. But certainly, what I’ve appreciated about Mike is his understanding of how to win games, and that’s what I think in the last few weeks we’ve really come together on. If we need to hang on to the ball and take care of it and they’re playing lights out, then we can do that. If we have to be explosive and try to go after people and play catch up, we can do that too. So, I think marrying those things together and continue to learn that process has been valuable.”
Meanwhile, he has also not coached with anyone on his own offensive coaching staff outside of his offensive line coach, Scott Huff. Jake Peetz, the passing game coordinator, would probably be a top candidate to replace Grubb if the team moved on. Imagine needing to rely on someone who may benefit from your failure.
That is a tough environment for any coach to succeed in, let alone one who is new to the league while working for a new head coach. That could be a reason to preach patience. It could be a reason to remake the offensive room with more a more unified staff.
Tale of two offenses
The notion that bringing back Grubb was a question would have been foolish five weeks ago. Seattle was one of only three teams in the NFL to score 20+ points in every one of their first seven games. High-flying Baltimore and Washington were the only other teams to do it. Grubb and the offense ranked among or near the Top 10 in most major offensive categories. That changed dramatically after a 31-10 drubbing at the hands of the Buffalo Bills. Seattle has become a Bottom 5 offense in the weeks since.
Offensive performance does not happen in a vacuum, so let’s take a look at the defenses they played across the season.
It can be difficult to capture the quality of the defense a team faces if you just look at the cumulative rankings. There are injuries and other variables. The table above shows both the cumulative rank and where the defenses ranked in the week preceding the game against the Seahawks.
Seattle faced three Top 10 defenses by current DVOA rankings in the first seven games, and three that ranked among the Bottom 10. They faced two Top 10 (along with the 12th) defenses over their last five games, and no defenses ranked in the Bottom 10, though the Rams are close.
Looking at the rankings at the time of the games does not change much. Seattle went up against some cupcakes early on and have not had those over the past few weeks. The Rams defense has been a high variance group, meaning they have played well in some games and poorly in others. They appeared to have one of their better games against the Seahawks.
Some college coaches who come to the NFL like Kingsbury and Chip Kelly got the reputation for fading down the stretch as their schemes did not prove adaptable enough against NFL defenses. That could be what is happening with Grubb, but there are other explanations that seem more plausible.
Offensive line struggles
Seahawks fans do not need to be reminded of the poor play of their offensive line. Still, it is an important factor to consider when trying to assess the performance of an OC. Take a look at these composite pass protection rankings that Ben Baldwin has pulled together.
Just two of the teams with lines ranked 22nd or lower have offenses among the Top 10 in scoring. Conversely, the best lines are among the better scoring teams in the league. It is not as simple as, “get a great offensive line and have a great offense,” but it is challenging for any coach to overcome bottom tier line play.
Past Seahawks OCs dealt with bad line play as well. Shane Waldron’s offense had generally better efficiency numbers than Grubb’s with a poor line. There are differences, though. Damien Lewis was a better player than Laken Tomlinson at left guard. Evan Brown may have been better than what Seattle was getting from Connor Williams, especially when you account for the snapping problems. Right guard has certainly not been better and could be argued that is has been worse due to lack of continuity and problematic play from both Anthony Bradford and Christian Haynes. Right tackle has arguably been equivalent but has seen four different players at the position. There is an argument to be made that this line has been uniquely challenging to coach around.
There is some promise in what Olu Oluwatimi, Abe Lucas, and Sataoa Laumea have shown recently. We will need to see the final five games to know if the group has turned enough of a corner to allow for more clear evaluation of the play caller, independent of line play.
Defenses daring Seattle to run
Defenses have played zone coverage 66.7% of the time against Seattle since Week 8, second-most in the NFL. They have played 2-high (two safeties back) 46.3% of the time, sixth-most in the NFL. That is up from 12th (zone) and 15th (2-high) over the first seven weeks.
They are adjusting to what was the best part of this offense through Week 7, the passing game. Seattle ranked 1st in the NFL at 270.9 yards per game at that point. Smith was on his way to the highest passing yard total since Patrick Mahomes in 2022.
Defenses are dedicating more people to coverage, and the passing totals have dropped to 221.6 yards per game, 20th in the NFL since Week 8.
The same thing happened to Mahomes and Andy Reid. People forget that the Chiefs offense used to be predicated on a lot of explosives down the field, but has become far more dink-and-dunk after defenses switched to predominantly 2-high coverages.
A key difference, besides having a generational talent at QB, is the Chiefs have had a good offensive line most of that time and a credible run game. Reid definitely has done a better job than Grubb at designing screens and yards-after-catch plays that can punish zone defenses, but it is hard to imagine Reid and Mahomes would be as successful with this Seahawks line and total lack of run attack.
The top way to get defenses out of keeping extra guys in coverage with a 2-high shell is to run the ball. Smith talked about this recently.
“I think the main thing is that if you’re getting a lot of cover two,” Smith said. “You should be able to run the ball. You should have advantage looks in the run game. I think that’s the start. You want to try and get those guys to bring an eighth man into the box or a seventh man into the box depending on your formation.”
Grubb has been reluctant to call run plays.
He has the 3rd-highest neutral script early down pass rate in the NFL at 58.5%. The “Let Russ Cook” Seahawks fans would have killed for a Grubb-style offense back then when the team was doing a lot of run-run-pass play calling. When Pete Carroll talked about balance on offense, it was never about run or pass rate. It was about being good enough at both to force defenses to adjust to you instead of vice versa.
Seattle has yet to establish a credible enough run game to force teams out of Cover 2. This is arguably the most important challenge to overcome the rest of this season for the offense and the team overall. It will also tell us a lot about Grubb.
Run game changes
Grubb has a background as an offensive line coach and has history with his current line coach, Huff. They inherited an offensive line with a lot of issues. One of them seems to be a collection of linemen who have different types of run blocking schemes they are best suited to play.
We have seen the team try to be a zone blocking team much of the year. There was a decent mix of gap blocking as well. It is not abnormal for teams to run both styles of blocking, but it has felt more like an expedition to find something that works with the personnel they have than an offensive philosophy.
Something changed, though, last week against the Jets.
Nearly 90% of the run plays were gap blocking in New York. That included a lot of what is called duo where linemen double team opposing defenders. Seattle excelled on those plays, averaging over 6.0 yards per carry. It could have been a specific matchup or game plan.
More likely, the addition of Laumea to the lineup, in addition to more weeks of practice with Lucas and Oluwatimi, has created a more unified blocking style. Grubb loved what he saw and stuck with it.
“I thought last week was probably our best week as far as working the football inside the B gaps and getting physical on some of those double teams,” Grubb said. “There were certainly some times in the Jets game where I felt like we were dominating the line of scrimmage and moving those double teams, and they did a great job with it. I thought at the right moments on a couple of those long drives, that was really what helped us sustain. I thought last week was one of our biggest steps in the run game, and I thought we did a great job.”
It is a shame Walker will not be available when the team plays the Cardinals this week given his ability to create explosive plays. There are some signs for the first time this season that the run game could emerge as a viable partner to the passing attack.
Where to go from here
Grubb had an up and down season to this point. He has not burst onto the scene as the next big thing at OC. He has also been better than a lot of OCs out there, especially when looking at the hand he was dealt. The best thing for the organization would be for him to prove his worth the rest of this year and to have continuity next season.
It is possible that even if the offense finishes strong, he and Macdonald may choose to part ways. They may not be a philosophical match.
Setting the interpersonal stuff aside, it seems this offense has utilized it’s weapons far better than previous coordinators here. Smith-Njigba, in particular, has been able emerge as more than a screen pass merchant. The run game feels like the key cog to give the offense a chance to dictate terms to opponents in a way they have not been able to recently.
Adding a solid guard in the offseason, and perhaps a better blocking tight end beyond AJ Barner, would go a long way toward elevating the offense further.
Seattle faces a series of good defenses the rest of the way. There will be no asterisk if they find their footing and start putting up points. It will be well earned. Grubb has made a career of grinding his way to success. The next five games will either be his last in Seattle or the foundation of something special.