Turf Show Times
Maybe not since the Seattle Seahawks hired Chuck Knox in 1983 has the team appeared to be trying harder to look like the Rams as they do in 2025. Although the Seahawks have recently tried stealing pieces from Sean McVay to fix the offense, this time Seattle thinks the moves will actually work. In their most recent preseason game, a 33-16 win over the Chiefs, the Seahawks put up 477 total yards of offense, including 268 on the ground.
It was only a meaningless preseason game. But will a “McVay-like offense” in Seattle carry into the regular season and challenge the Rams for the NFC West division?
First the team hired Klint Kubiak to be the new offensive coordinator in January after firing a one-year experiment with college coach Ryan Grubb. Although Kubiak never directly worked for or with McVay, the roots are basically the same: Mike Shanahan.
Kubiak’s dad Gary was the offensive coordinator for Shanahan’s Broncos, many years before McVay was hired by Mike Shanahan in Washington. McVay and Kyle Shanahan are two peas in a pod and Klint Kubiak is basically one seedling over; Kubiak was passing game coordinator for Shanahan on the 49ers in 2023.
The evidence of a McVay-esque offense in Seattle are explained in this breakdown by All-22 Films:
The Seahawks also signed Cooper Kupp in free agency after he was released by the Rams, setting up a spot for him in Kubiak’s offense as a complementary weapon for Jaxon Smith-Njigba in Week 1. No active player in football who isn’t on the Rams right now will better understand the intentions of a McVay offense than Kupp will.
Seattle’s passing game coordinator Jake Peetz was an assistant and pass game specialist in L.A. under McVay from 2022-2023. He was also an assistant under McVay in 2014.
And though they’ve never worked with McVay, several other new Seahawks assistant coaches will understand the intentions of the offense as well:
None of which is meant to imply that the Seahawks have nailed their hires and will challenge McVay’s offensive accomplishments. It just means that they’re really, really trying to.
Although many people questioned why the Seahawks would trade Geno Smith to the Raiders, one thing we know for sure is that Smith is not a Kubiak, Shanahan, or McVay quarterback. Maybe he could have picked it up quickly and excelled in it, but we’ll never find out because Seattle decided to make a change at quarterback after hiring Kubiak and overhauling the offensive staff with Shanahan-y assistants.
For better or worse, Darnold does have experience with it.
After disastrous stints with the Jets and...
