Where was the play-action in Seahawks’ opener?

Sep 9, 2025, 10:07 AM | Updated: Sep 10, 2025, 11:31 am

Seattle Sports

Ever since Klint Kubiak took over as the Seattle Seahawks’ offensive coordinator in January, it was widely assumed that he’d bring more play-action passing to the offense.

Bump: Seahawks’ run game too ‘predictable’ in opening loss

After all, play-action is a staple of the Shanahan system that Kubiak’s offense stems from. And it serves as a key complement to the wide-zone blocking that’s such an integral part of Kubiak’s scheme.

But in Sunday’s season-opening loss to the San Francisco 49ers, play-action was curiously missing from Seattle’s game plan.

The Seahawks used play-action on just two of Sam Darnold’s 26 dropbacks, according to Pro Football Focus. That equated to a 7.7% play-action rate, which was the lowest among all 33 NFL quarterbacks in Week 1.

For context, that was even lower than Geno Smith’s 18.3% play-action rate with Seattle last year under Ryan Grubb, which was tied for 34th out of 40 QBs.

Even more perplexing was the fact that both of the Seahawks’ play-action calls on Sunday produced successful results – a 21-yard completion to Jaxon Smith-Njigba on the Seahawks’ lone touchdown drive, and a 5-yard scramble by Darnold that moved the chains on Seattle’s fourth-quarter field-goal drive.

When asked about his team’s lack of play-action usage, Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald emphasized it needs to be a larger part of their offense moving forward.

“We need to action more,” Macdonald said. “We need more movement. So we’ll call it, and we’ll execute it when called.”

Why wasn’t it called on Sunday?

During Tuesday’s Blue 88 segment on Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk, former NFL quarterback Brock Huard speculated on some potential reasons why the Seahawks got away from play-action in the opener.

For one, Huard pointed to the number of screen passes Seattle called, explaining that perhaps the Seahawks felt they could capitalize on that area of their game and use those screens to slow down San Francisco’s pass rush.

“Screens can be great,” Huard said. “But when screens are run, you can’t really run (the ball) and then run the play-action off of it and do those things that are kind of in those tunnels. So it was like, hey, I really like this concept, this is gonna be open. … But then all of a sudden you look up and you’re like, whoa, we had two play-action passes out of 26 attempts? That can’t happen again.”

Huard also pointed to the possibility that Seattle was trying to scheme around 49ers star edge rusher Nick Bosa.

“(Bosa) is a problem,” Huard said. “So your whole boot game, your whole move-the-pocket game, your whole play-pass – if you turn your back to that guy, bad things happen.”

Even so, Huard said there simply has to be more play-action going forward.

“This was their first time doing it with the real bullets flying against a very good defense that knows (the Seahawks) and knows this scheme,” Huard said. “But there’s gotta be some conversation on those headsets of, hey, let’s get back to the DNA. And the DNA is the run, the outside run, the bootleg, some of the play-action pass off of it. We’ve gotta get to some more of that.”

Listen to the full Blue 88 segment at this link or in the audio player near the bottom of this story. Tune in to Brock and Salk weekdays from 6 to 10 a.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.