Grey Zabel: Seahawks’ new OC sees game ‘differently’

As the Seattle Seahawks aim to become just the third repeat Super Bowl champions this century, they head into 2026 with mostly the same cast that raised the Lombardi Trophy this past February.

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One of the few big differences is new offensive coordinator Brian Fleury, who takes over Seattle’s offense after Klint Kubiak departed to become the Las Vegas Raiders’ head coach.

Fleury, who spent the past seven seasons as an assistant on Kyle Shanahan’s San Francisco 49ers staff, will be a first-time play caller in Seattle. But he hails from the same Shanahan coaching tree as Kubiak, so the Seahawks will be running a similar offense as last year.

Seahawks left guard Grey Zabel had high praise for Fleury during a conversation with Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk on Monday.

“Brian has come in and done an absolutely unbelievable job, top to bottom,” Zabel said. “He wants to build on what we already have, but put a new kind of wrinkle (on it). … He’s a guy that just sees the game of football differently than 99.9% of human beings do. It’s truly remarkable how he sees it, and his ability to teach it.”

It makes sense that Fleury could see the game from a different perspective than most coaches, given his unique variety of experience working on both sides of the ball.

During his time in San Francisco, Fleury served as the 49ers’ tight ends coach (2022-25), run game coordinator (2025), offensive quality control coach (2020-21) and defensive quality control coach (2019).

Prior to that, Fleury was the Miami Dolphins’ director of football research (2017-18) and football research analyst (2016), the Cleveland Browns’ outside linebackers coach (2015) and assistant linebackers coach (2014), and the Buffalo Bills’ quality control coach (2013).

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Before reaching the NFL coaching ranks, Fleury was a defensive coordinator at FCS-level Sacred Heart University and a defensive backs coach at FCS-level Towson University. And as a player, he was a quarterback at the University of Maryland and FCS-level Towson.

“If he’s standing back behind a play, he just sees the defensive front, linebackers, coverages, all that, just a little bit differently,” Zabel said. “And he sees things happening before it happens. And he allows (quarterback Sam Darnold) and those guys to play free, but also to have a vision of how he wants us to play.

“And it’s one of those deals where he gives us answers to the test when we don’t even know the question’s going to be there. So it’s remarkable what he’s done just in the short time he’s been here. And we’re excited, because I feel like we’re just at the tip of the iceberg right now.”

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

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