Field Gulls
A closer look at the new Seahawks offensive coordinator’s background, concepts and play designs.
Twenty days after firing Ryan Grubb, Seattle has finally found its new Offensive Coordinator for 2025, and the chosen one is Klint Kubiak. The position is crucial to the team’s success, since the offense ended up being one of the main reasons for the team’s losses and, consequently, resulting in the team’s failure to reach the playoffs.
Let’s analyze Kubiak’s impact as the team’s new OC!
Kubiak is the son of former NFL head coach Gary Kubiak, and began his coaching career in the NFL in 2013 as an offensive quality control coach for the Minnesota Vikings after two years as an offensive assistant at Texas A&M.
After a brief stop in college again, this time as the wide receivers coach for the Kansas Jayhawks in 2015, he was with the Denver Broncos as an offensive assistant from 2016 to 2018. He returned to the Vikings from 2019 to 2021, where he was the QB coach and offensive coordinator in his final season with the team.
When Kubiak took over as the Vikings quarterbacks coach in 2019, he helped veteran Kirk Cousins have one of the best seasons of his career, throwing 26 touchdowns to eight interceptions as the team advanced to the Divisional Round of the postseason. Mike Zimmer promoted Kubiak to offensive coordinator in 2021.
Under his direction, Cousins nearly reached his career touchdowns record again, finishing ninth in the NFL with 33. But Minnesota finished 8-9 and missed the playoffs, leading to the firing of the entire coaching staff and a new regime coming on board. In 2022, Kubiak returned to the Broncos as the passing game coordinator under Nathaniel Hackett, but did not return after being fired. He served in the same role with the San Francisco 49ers in 2023 before taking over as offensive coordinator with the Saints in 2024.
Seattle brought in three options for two interviews: Grant Udinski, Hank Fraley and Kubiak. Last Friday, Seattle interviewed Fraley for the second time. Later on Friday, his wife informed that he would return to Detroit and that the deal with Seattle was very close to happening.
From this, what we can infer is that Fraley was Seattle’s first option for OC, and after failing to bring him in, the team went after the second option. In the process, the team also interviewed Byron Leftwich, Adam Stenavich, OC of the Packers and finally the Ravens’ run-game coordinator, Travis Switzer.
I believe that of the remaining options, Stenavich, who also had the title of Run Game Coordinator, was the best option along with Kubiak. Klint was the only one with experience as a play caller and therefore a proper OC. Udinski seemed very promising, but would Seattle have the patience to wait for him to adapt to the role? The team had just fired Ryan Grubb, an OC who would obviously need...
