RENTON, Wash. -- As the Seattle Seahawks conduct their second search for an offensive coordinator in 11 months, general manager John Schneider and coach Mike Macdonald will have at least one significant advantage that they didn't have on their first attempt.
More time, and thus more options.
Consider that this time last year, the organization was still conducting initial interviews for its head coach. The Seahawks weren't able to conduct an initial interview with Macdonald during the Baltimore Ravens' playoff bye week. They had to wait for the Ravens to lose in the AFC Championship Game to speak with him for the first time.
Macdonald was hired Jan. 31 and was the seventh of eight coaches hired during the last cycle -- which left he and Schneider scrambling to assemble a staff. By the time they tabbed Ryan Grubb as offensive coordinator in early February -- despite Macdonald's misgivings about his pass-heavy rsum, as one team source described it -- their list of viable alternatives had dwindled. In that sense, the Grubb hire was to some degree a function of timing.
But the search for his replacement was already underway when Macdonald held his end-of-season news conference on Jan. 7, two days after the Seahawks finished 10-7 and missed the playoffs.
"The silver lining of being in the situation is, and the opportunity that you're presented with is, you do have a head start on the rest of the league to a certain extent," he said. "So this is something we really have to make sure we take advantage of. This is a position we don't want to be in ever again, so hopefully make the most of it."
The Seahawks had requested interviews with at least three candidates as of Thursday afternoon -- Detroit Lions offensive line coach Hank Fraley, Chicago Bears interim head coach Thomas Brown and New Orleans Saints OC Klint Kubiak. Brown and Kubiak have called plays at the pro level while Fraley -- who had a 10-year NFL career as a center and has only coached the offensive line -- has not, though Macdonald said that isn't necessarily a prerequisite for the job.
Even if it's not as a playcaller, extensive NFL experience would seemingly appeal to Macdonald given how the Grubb experiment went.
Grubb spent his entire coaching career in college before joining the Seahawks, making for a steep learning curve as he adjusted to the narrower hashes, a running clock and better players. Whereas in college he could identify weak links and pick on certain defensive personnel, Grubb acknowledged near the end of the season that he's had to learn to attack schemes and structures in the NFL, where the talent disparities aren't as great.
"That's been probably as big of a process as anything," Grubb said, "just understanding that part of it is that there are different families defensively that show up in the NFL and schematically where their things come from and how to attack those things."
But the reasons Grubb was fired go beyond his growing pains and the bottom-line results for Seattle's offense, which finished 14th in total yards (332.2 per game) and 21st in scoring (20.0). It also goes beyond the tension that developed from Grubb not exactly being a personality fit, with team sources describing him as being set in his ways.
"It really just was just an alignment thing and a vision thing," Macdonald said, "and that's why we made the decision."
That was Macdonald's fear all along.
Grubb caught the Seahawks' eye while coordinating an explosive offense nearby at the University of Washington over the past two seasons. They were intrigued by his dynamic passing game, according to a team source. But he and Macdonald made for a curious pair -- a defensive-minded head coach who wants to run the ball and a coordinator who had led some of the nation's most pass-heavy offenses at Washington and Fresno State before that.
Grubb had to convince Macdonald in the interview process that he could be balanced, according to the source, and he did so in part by touting his prior experience as an O-line coach and run-game coordinator.
"It just didn't manifest itself the way that we expected," Macdonald said, "and I think ... the direction that was going, it just wasn't the way that I wanted it to go."
Another issue in Grubb's transition to the NFL was his reliance on the shotgun, a staple of the college game that can make life easier on the quarterback but hard on the offensive line since it reduces the threat of the run. In Weeks 1 through 9, their shotgun snap percentage was 80.8% (fourth in NFL). It was largely at Macdonald's behest when they started to operate more under center after the Week 10 bye, which coincided with improvement from the offense. Their shotgun snap percentage dropped to 71.4% in Weeks 10 through 18.
The offense appeared to be hitting its stride in Seattle's Week 14 victory over the Arizona Cardinals. In what was perhaps the best representation of how Macdonald wants to win games, the Seahawks ran 31 times for a season-high 176 yards, allowed no sacks and two QB hits on Geno Smith, took the ball away twice and finished with a time-of-possession advantage of six minutes.
"I think that game we played complementary football," Macdonald said -- one of four times he used that phrase -- in his wrap-up news conference.
But the Seahawks didn't do enough of that, finishing 28th in rushing yards per game (95.7), 17th in yards per carry (4.2), 29th in designed rush rate (33.7%) and 28th in average time of possession (28:53).
To hear Macdonald describe DK Metcalf's season, it sounds like he'll want his next coordinator to have a better plan for utilizing the star receiver than his last one did. Metcalf was off to a scorching start when he suffered a knee injury in October that sidelined him for two games, but he didn't top 70 yards in any of his final eight games.
"He's such a force out there, it's not just good enough to get the coverage tilted for him," Macdonald said. "We got to figure out more ways to give him the ball consistently and let him impact the game with the ball on his hands rather than just moving coverage that way."
Macdonald said no in-house offensive coaches were currently under consideration for a promotion to coordinator. He wants to strike a balance between efficiency in the search and thoroughness.
"It's not just like, 'Hey, I have to have A, B and C,'" he said. "We want to have an open mind. We want to try to find the best fit for our football team and the guys we have on offense right now."
