SEATTLE SEAHAWKS

Seahawks OC Hire: The Shanahan tree could be called the Kubiak tree

Jan 27, 2025, 11:41 AM | Updated: 12:32 pm

The family coaching ties between new Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak and San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan go way back.

Just how far? Consider this: For 20 of the past 31 NFL seasons, a Kubiak and a Shanahan have coached together on the same staff.

Seahawks hire Klint Kubiak as new offensive coordinator

Klint Kubiak and Kyle Shanahan are both sons of Super Bowl-winning head coaches. Klint Kubiak’s father, Gary, was a 10-year NFL head coach who won a Lombardi Trophy with the Denver Broncos in 2015. Kyle Shanahan’s father, Mike, was a longtime NFL head coach who guided the Broncos to back-to-back Super Bowl titles in the late 1990s.

And there’s been plenty of overlap between the two families. Gary Kubiak spent 12 years coaching under Mike Shanahan. Kyle Shanahan spent four years coaching under Gary Kubiak. Klint Kubiak spent one year coaching under Kyle Shanahan. And Klint Kubiak’s brother, Klay, has spent four years coaching under Kyle Shanahan.

Here’s a closer look at the intertwined coaching trees involving the Seahawks’ new OC and the head coach of Seattle’s fierce NFC West rival.

The Kubiak-Shanahan coaching tree

• From 1994 to 2005, Mike Shanahan and Gary Kubiak spent 12 straight seasons coaching together. Along the way, they won three Super Bowls and directed some of the league’s top-scoring offenses. They both were on the 1994 Super Bowl-winning 49ers’ coaching staff, with Shanahan serving as the OC and Kubiak as the quarterbacks coach. They then embarked on a success-filled run in Denver, where they spent the next 11 seasons together with Shanahan as the head coach and Kubiak as the OC. During their run in the Mile High City, the Broncos won back-to-back Super Bowls in 1997 and 1998. Their 1994 49ers and 1997 Broncos both led the NFL in scoring, while their 1998 Broncos finished second in scoring.

• When Gary Kubiak became Texans head coach in 2006, he added Kyle Shanahan to his staff. The younger Shanahan spent four seasons in Houston in various roles under Kubiak, serving as the wide receivers coach in 2006, quarterbacks coach in 2007, and OC in 2008 and 2009. Shanahan then left to become Washington’s OC in 2010 and later had two more OC stops before taking the 49ers’ head-coaching job in 2017.

• Prior to taking the Seattle OC job, Klint Kubiak served a pair of one-year OC stints with the Minnesota Vikings in 2021 and the New Orleans Saints in 2024. Between those two OC gigs, Kubiak spent the 2023 season on Kyle Shanahan’s staff as the 49ers’ passing game coordinator. San Francisco reached the Super Bowl that year, while quarterback Brock Purdy finished fifth in passing yardage and ranked No. 1 in ESPN’s QBR metric.

• Klint Kubiak’s younger brother, Klay, has spent the past four seasons on Shanahan’s staff in San Francisco. The 36-year-old Klay was the 49ers’ defensive quality control coach in 2021, their assistant QB coach in 2022 and 2023, and their offensive passing game specialist in 2024. He is expected to be promoted to San Francisco’s OC role, but Shanahan will remain the offensive play-caller.

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