The National Football League is a cutthroat business. Teams overhaul their roster and coaching staff, seemingly, yearly. Players are released or traded for any number of reasons, including underperformance, fit with team, contract issues or just a plain old bad attitude. The same goes for coaches. If you aren’t calling the right plays or improving the players then you won’t last long. This, unfortunately, is what happened to first-year Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb.

News broke Monday morning that Ryan Grubb had been fired by Mike Macdonald, who confirmed it himself while speaking to local radio hosts’ Brock Huard and Mike Salk on his weekly coaches show with 710 ESPN. Macdonald said,

“It’s really as simple as just I felt like the direction our offense was going was different than the vision that I had for our team, and felt like it was just a necessary decision at this point.”

He went further saying “we respect the heck out of him, we wish him the best. These are tough decisions to make. You know, these are really tough decisions to make, but the team comes first and just felt it was the best for the team. … I think we just needed to go in a different direction and that’s why we ultimately made the move.”

The Seattle Seahawks offense wasn’t bad by any stretch, especially when it came to passing the ball, but it wasn’t good either. They finished 7th in pass attempts (593) and 8th in pass yards (4020), however all that passing didn’t translate into points. The team finished 18th in total points (375) and 20th in pass TD’s (21).

In 2024, 6 QB’s threw for 4000+ yards: Joe Burrow, Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield, Geno Smith, Sam Darnold and Lamar Jackson. 5 out of the 6 threw 35+ TD’s, while 4 out of the 6 led their team to the playoffs. Burrow came up just short of making the post-season, with Geno being the only guy to barely exceed 20 TD’s and not lead his team to the post-season.

A pass-first offense made sense on paper, as Seattle has an excellent receiving corps, it just didn’t come to fruition like Ryan Grubb or Mike Macdonald envisioned. Grubb became too fixated on passing and neglected the running game in a major way. The Seahawks finished near the bottom of the league in a couple of very important rushing categories: 29th in attempts (381) and 28th in yards (1627). It’s not like they don’t have some talented runners either. Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet, both 2nd round draft picks, form a decent backfield duo. Weirdly, the team finished just outside the top-10 (11th – tied with the Chargers and 49ers) in rushing TD’s with 17, so it wasn’t like they were totally ineffective on the ground.

The overreliance on passing and underutilization of running is what ultimately doomed Ryan Grubb. He couldn’t figure out how to call a balanced offensive gameplan. It seemed like he trusted Geno Smith and the pass catchers to lead the offense over the running backs. The biggest reason for this offensive inequality was the play of the offensive line.

Injuries kept the o-line from ever forming any semblance of cohesion, in addition to the team going the “cost-effective” route while building the line. General Manager John Schneider doesn’t like to sign expensive free agents to add talent to the team. He prefers to draft and develop a prospect or gamble on an older, more experienced player coming off a down season or injury. An example of this was how they handled the Center position.

After moving on from Evan Brown in the offseason, John Schneider opted to sign Conor Williams, who was coming off an injury, to a team-friendly, 1-year deal. He was the starter up until Week 10, with varying results, before abruptly retiring and forcing 2nd year pro Olu Oluwatimi into the starting role. To his credit Olu played OK and gained valuable experience, it just hurt the consistency and cohesion of the o-line to have to adjust to a whole new player at a key position midseason. The left and right guard positions also suffered from a lack of resources spent.

LG Damien Lewis (LSU) spent his first 4 seasons in Seattle after being drafted in the 3rd round of the 2020 NFL draft. He wasn’t the best guard in the NFL or anything. He was more of a solid plug-and-play type of player, who excelled at run blocking and was always available – played 90+ percent of the snaps each of the last 4 seasons. When his rookie contract was up John Schneider opted to let him test free agency. He ended up finding a home with the Carolina Panthers, signing a 4-year, $53 million dollar contract. Once again, Schneider went the cost-effective route and signed LG Laken Tomlinson to a 1-year, $1.2 million dollar deal. Seattle also took a couple of offensive linemen in the 2024 NFL draft, Christian Haynes (3rd round – UConn) and Sataoa Laumea (6th round – Utah). Both rookies played throughout the season, Laumea even started 6 games, but were highly inconsistent.

Abe Lucas, the projected right tackle, started the season on the physically unable to perform list and wasn’t activated until Week 11 against San Francisco. So, for the first 9 weeks, Seattle had to settle for a rotating cast of George Fant, Stone Forsythe and Michael Jerrell. They played OK, but again the lack of a dependable, quality option hurt the overall play of the group.

The Seahawks front-office did Ryan Grubb no favors in building such a poor offensive line for the first year coordinator. While OC of the Washington Huskies, Grubb helped build one of the best, high-powered offensives in the country in large part due to one of the most talented and dominate offensive lines in America, filled with All-American’s who played many games together. This was the bedrock of the offense and what powered the team. It’s a big reason as to why he was so highly-sought after when Kalen DeBoer bolted for the Alabama job.

Personally, I thought Seattle should’ve given Ryan Grubb another year to implement his offense with a substantially upgraded offensive line. It’s extremely tough to come into the NFL after being in college all his career be successful immediately and know what will/won’t work against professionals. Even with the imbalance of play-calling towards throwing, I think his offensive would’ve found it’s footing and thrive with just a bit more talent infused into the line. If he had the offseason with the team he could’ve worked with the players to clean up the short yardage running issues, redzone woes/play-calling and mediocre 3rd down conversion %.

Now, Mike Macdonald will have to search for a new OC and hope whoever comes in will hit it out of the park in year 1 or else fans will start to question his hire and ability to lead the franchise into a new era of Seahawks football.

As for Ryan Grubb, I have a feeling he will end up back at Alabama with his former coach Kalen DeBoer, either as the OC or a special consultant.