Another advantage bye week gives Seahawks over 49ers

The Seattle Seahawks have one very clear advantage heading into their divisional round tilt with the San Francisco 49ers.

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The Seahawks will be coming off some extended rest after receiving a first-round bye, meaning Saturday’s showdown will be their first game in two weeks. Meanwhile, the banged-up 49ers will enter the game on short rest, having played in the wild-card round just six days earlier against the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles.

But that isn’t the only advantage the bye provided the Seahawks, according to former NFL quarterback Brock Huard. Because of the NFL’s rules for interviewing coaches on playoff teams, the week off gave Seattle another upper-hand.

Offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak and defensive coordinator Aden Durde each went through multiple virtual interviews for head-coaching jobs last week. Since the Seahawks had a first-round bye, Kubiak and Durde were available for virtual interviews starting last Wednesday and had to complete them by the end of the weekend.

Niners defensive coordinator Robert Saleh has also been requested for virtual interviews by five teams. But since San Francisco played during the wild-card round, he was unable to start doing the interviews until Wednesday of this week, meaning he will have to juggle that with game-planning for the Seahawks all in the same week.

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Huard pointed to the performance of the Oregon Ducks in the College Football Playoff semifinals against Indiana as an example of the impact distractions for coordinators can have. The Ducks’ offensive and defensive coordinators accepted head-coaching roles with other colleges, where they immediately must start assembling staffs and recruiting players, but remained on staff for Oregon’s playoff run. When the Ducks ran into the top-ranked Hoosiers – a team Oregon lost to 30-20 in the regular season – Indiana rolled to a 56-22 blowout win.

“When you’ve got those split interests, these are human beings with only so much energy and so many hours in a day,” Huard said on Wednesday during his Blue 88 segment on Seattle Sports Brock and Salk. “I’m sorry, that’s going to have an impact and effect when Indiana has zero of that.”

Huard doesn’t think the interviews will create much stress for Saleh since he has prior experience as a head coach, but pairing them with needing to prepare to face the Seahawks adds another wrinkle to Saturday’s game that favors Seattle.

“I think he’s got his Zoom interviews probably in check. I don’t think that takes an immense amount of effort or time or worry or stress from him” Huard said of Saleh. “He’s been there and done that before. But that is a different animal while he’s also preparing for … the Seahawks this week.”

“Kubiak’s done and Durde will do none of that this week,” Huard added. “That hay is in the barn, and I love that little ancillary advantage for the Hawks as well.”

Macdonald’s take

Head coach Mike Macdonald on Tuesday also acknowledged the advantage his team has since its assistant coaches were able to conduct their interviews during the bye rather than this week.

“It’s not a work-intensive week coaching-wise because you’re really trying to get ahead on all these things. We ended up doing a lot of work on the Packers, and that didn’t get us anywhere. So that’s really what we were working at the beginning of last week, some self-scout stuff,” Macdonald said. “I think it worked out well that (we) had the two days off and they could kind of shift their focus, and then once it’s over, then that’s over and we’re able to move forward. So really fortunate that we had the bye.

“The teams that are going into it this week with interviews, I think that’s significantly tougher that you have to kind of shift your brain in the latter part of the week and then still be in tune with what you’re doing game-plan wise.”

Hear Brock Huard’s Blue 88 segment at this link or the audio player in this story. Tune in to Brock and Salk weekdays from 6-10 a.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app. 

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