Seahawks wanna be like Vike?

Seattle's latest coaching hires bring them closer to mirroring Klint Kubiak's 2021 staff

Offensive coordinators tend to get promoted, not fired, when their team has the fewest turnovers in the league. But Klint Kubiak was not so lucky in 2021 — he was the collateral damage of head coach Mike Zimmer being let go — and he still hasn’t fully recovered from losing that job after the quarterback had the best season of his career.

With the hirings that the Seahawks have made since choosing him to be their next OC, it seems Kubiak hasn’t forgotten that 2021 was actually a great year for him and the biggest question left for Seattle’s offense after Tuesday’s coaching additions is, “How much further does Kubiak want to go in rebuilding the Seahawks in the image of his greatest season?”

By adding Rick Dennison as the run game coordinator under Kubiak, the Seahawks now share 4 prominent coaches with the 2021 Minnesota Vikings:

• OC - Kubiak

• QBs - Andrew Janocko

• RBs - Kennedy Polamalu

• RGC - Dennison (who was a ‘senior offensive advisor’ in 2021)

Polamalu’s inclusion is perhaps coincidental because the Seahawks hired him last year, but nonetheless that’s almost half of the entire offensive coaching staff under Zimmer in his final season as Vikings head coach.

The respect that John Schneider and Mike Macdonald have for Kubiak’s doomed season as Minnesota’s offensive coordinator is not without merit and the staff was fired because Zimmer had failed to reach the Super Bowl in eight years as the head coach. Aside from that miracle play to beat the Saints in 2017, the Vikings were consistently terrible in the postseason.

And that win required said miracle.

Replacing his father Gary as OC in 2021 and tabbing Janocko to replace him as QBs coach, Kubiak’s only season in that role with Minnesota produced the following:

• 13 turnovers (tied for first with Seattle, Green Bay)

• 7 interceptions (fewest)

• 6 fumbles lost (4th-lowest)

• 6.7 Net yards/pass (12th)

• 34 TD passes (9th)

• 17th in rushing yards

• 19th in yards per carry

• 15th in points per drive

The Vikings had talent like Justin Jefferson, Dalvin Cook, Pro Bowl right tackle Brian O’Neill, Adam Thielen, and first round left tackle Christian Darrisaw, but were not without their faults. So these are especially respectable numbers for an offense that aside from Jefferson and O’Neill, did not necessarily have the best players in their primes at every position.

And Kirk Cousins, then in his 10th season, posted a career-best 1.2 INT% and had a 5.9% TD rate, the second-best of his career.

That’s why I can’t change my mind — until the Seahawks change it for me — that Seattle’s considering the potential benefits of signing Cousins if he’s released by the Atlanta Falcons. First and foremost, saving $30 million against the salary cap (because Cousins won’t cost his next team more than the vet minimum due to the offsets in his contract with the Falcons) for a quarterback who has a history with Kubiak that goes back to 2019; and even longer with Janocko.

Similarly, center Garrett Bradbury has been with the Vikings since 2019 and could be a cap casualty as well. Bradbury’s strength is run blocking, the very thing that Dennison — who was Bradbury’s first offensive line coach in Minnesota — was hired to coordinate.

All that being said, there’s no reason that Geno Smith couldn’t run the offense as well or better than Cousins.

Just because Cousins has specific experience with Kubiak and Janocko it doesn’t mean that Geno, a 12-year veteran who has basically had to pick up a new playbook every season of his career, couldn’t make all the same checks and throw all the same passes and then some.

It’s only the $30 million in cap space that makes the switch from Geno to Cousins seem like a consideration now that Seattle has hired so many close friends of the cheaper alternative.

Bradbury, on the other hand, feels like a slam dunk connection for Kubiak and Dennison if the Seahawks are unable or unwilling to land a better option on the market. He’ll be cheap, experienced, and he’ll know how to intrepret the language from coaches to Olu Oluwatimi and the rest of Seattle’s offensive linemen.

Are the 2025 Seahawks more talented than the 2021 Vikings?

A good place to end this would be comparing Kubiak’s roster four years ago to the one that he will have in Seattle and that’s a question that can’t be answered until after the draft, at least.

• Quarterback-wise, Geno to Cousins or Cousins to Cousins feels like a wash.

• A healthy season for Abe Lucas could propel him to the Brian O’Neill level, while better coaching could do for Charles Cross what it did for Darrisaw, a rising star at the left tackle position.

• The Seahawks don’t have a receiver as good as Justin Jefferson — nobody other than the Vikings do — but Jaxon Smith-Njigba is at least as good as Thielen and DK Metcalf, should he stay, could have a career season.

• Kenneth Walker has no excuses for not becoming as good as Cook, if not better, and the combination of him and Zach Charbonnet should be better than Cook and Alexander Mattison.

• Tyler Conklin and Noah Fant? Sure.

It really seems like the holes on Minnesota’s roster, including interior offensive line and potentially seeking an upgrade at quarterback, are roughly the same for Seattle.

If Mike Macdonald’s defense proves better than Zimmer’s 2021 defense (24th in points allowed, 30th in yards, 23rd in NY/A, 29th in YPC), and we expect that it will be, that would seem to be the formula for a playoff team.

But the Seahawks still need to aim higher than just making the playoffs.

The Seahawks must seek out players in free agency, trade, and the draft who could be great, not just ones who will fill their needs. Guys like Cousins, Bradberry, and my recent suggestion of a player like Stefon Diggs if Seattle trades Metcalf, are only plugging the holes in the boat.

Perhaps Kubiak, like Kyle Shanahan’s underwhelming career as an OC prior to getting the Falcons job in 2015, is only tapping the surface of what he can do as a play caller in the NFL. But to get there, he will have to do more than just call on old friends for help.

He’s going to need some new ones too.

Seaside Joe 2179