Brock: Two reasons Seahawks moved on from OC Ryan Grubb

Jan 6, 2025, 11:39 AM | Updated: Jan 7, 2025, 2:51 pm

Seattle Sports

Ryan Grubb’s tenure as Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator is over after only one season.

The Seahawks let go of their first-year offensive coordinator Monday following an up-and-down year for an offense filled with playmakers but also holes on the offensive line.

Seahawks coach Macdonald explains why OC Ryan Grubb was let go

ESPN’s Adam Schefter first reported the news. Head coach Mike Macdonald confirmed it during The Mike Macdonald Show on Seattle Sports.

Why did the Seahawks move on from their offensive coordinator after only one season? Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk shared their thoughts moments after the report broke Monday morning.

“Why? I think the biggest word that comes to my mind is identity,” co-host and former NFL quarterback Brock Huard said.

Huard noted the precarious nature of offensive coordinator jobs in the NFL. Detroit’s Ben Johnson, who is in his third season with the Lions, is currently the league’s longest-tenured offensive coordinator on a team whose head coach is not the offensive play-caller.

“When you’re an OC, you either get elevated to the head coaching job, or this happens – you get fired,” Huard said. “And it happens all over the league. It happened in-season in a bunch of different spots this year. It’s really hard to do, and if you don’t cultivate an identity to hang your hat on, then you run the risk of this happening.”

“I can’t say after 17 games what was the identity that Ryan Grubb wanted with his NFL Seahawk offense. I can’t say that,” Huard added. “I think it was a mixed bag and I think he loves to throw the football, and that’s probably the subtext to identity.”

Grubb called the plays for one of college football’s best offenses during his two seasons with the UW Huskies before being hired by the Seahawks. During his time on Montlake, Grubb’s offense was known for its potent passing game. The Seahawks had one of the league’s better passing offenses this season in terms of yardage, but establishing a consistent run game was a struggle throughout the year. Seattle finished the season 28th in the league with an average of 95.7 rushing yards per game.

“Wasn’t that always the conversation and the debate and the fear that we had heading into this season: Can this guy be the type of balanced offensive coordinator that fits with Mike Macdonald’s vision of the way a team should be run and that complementary ball that seems really important to a defensive coach?” co-host Mike Salk said. “It always felt like a bit of an awkward fit. It felt like they had run out of time, there was nobody left really on the board for them to go get (when they hired Grubb) and this is who they ended up with.”

The jump to the NFL

Huard pointed to Grubb’s struggles to adjust from the college game to the NFL as another factor in the firing. This was his first season coaching in the NFL in any capacity.

“A lifer in the college game dealing with grown professional men is a big step, a bigger step than Mike Macdonald had to take (going from defensive coordinator to first-time head coach),” Huard said. “Mike Macdonald has been in this business, he’s been on the NFL. He stepped away for a year and did the college side, but he knows how to relate, how to communicate personality-wise, how to love and get the most out of these dudes. Ryan Grubb can be a gruff guy. He can be a hard personality. He can be a tough sucker because he is self-made by the bootstraps (rising) from the very bottom of the profession all the way up to nearly the very top of it.

“But personality-wise, I think (he) at times can be a little bit challenging, and it was a work in progress to work with the guys, I think, personality and relationship-wise to cultivate those connective tissues, too.”

During his final press conference of the season last week, Grubb mentioned what he had learned in his first season coaching at the NFL. He highlighted how in the NFL it’s much more about attacking schemes than specific players on the defense.

Huard shared his take on that.

“Yeah, it’s the difference in the NFL and college game. (In the) college game, you got a lot of weak species that you can go attack. There are gonna be just personnel issues and weaknesses on a bunch of teams that you can go exploit,” Huard said. “(In the) NFL, you don’t have much of that. Everybody is pretty darn good at this level. So it becomes much more about the matchup game of attacking that schematic matchup, versus in college you can go attack the people, the personnel, a whole lot more. I just think there was a big learning curve to grow in that way this season for Grubb.”

Listen to the full conversation at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Tune in to Brock and Salk weekdays from 6-10 a.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.