Was Ryan Grubb a bad hire?
The Seahawks may want someone more experienced this time
Ryan Grubb will forever go down as a one-year Seahawks coordinator, same as Pete Carroll’s first OC Jeremy Bates. That fact alone doesn’t bode well for chances that Grubb will be perceived as anything but a bad hire.
However, sometimes circumstances dictate that teams must take certain risks with people — whether they are players or coaches — and maybe Grubb was Seattle’s best chance at landing a budding star on late notice.
And Grubb, like current OC “stars” such as Joe Brady and Liam Coen (fired by the Rams after one season after he too was pulled up from college ranks), could still emerge as a top play caller in the future.
The simple answer is that Grubb was a “bad hire” because he didn’t make it to year two and the Seahawks were one of the worst rushing teams in the NFL. But Seattle wasn’t able to search under ideal circumstances like they could this year:
Seahawks were last team to hire HC
Therefore one of the last teams to hire an OC
Many of the best play callers are head coaches
Many of the rest are under contract with other teams
Great play callers do not fly under the radar
Anybody who the Seahawks hired last year would have to be a risk and Grubb at least appeared to fit Seattle’s personnel given what he had at UW with Michael Penix and 3 well-fed receivers. Hiring a defensive guru is a double edged sword because even if Mike Macdonald could get the defense right in 2-3 years, he was also heavily reliant on an offensive coordinator who could manage that side without his help.
Consider that Macdonald didn’t fire Aden Durde, but also says Durde isn’t ready to call plays for the Seahawks in 2025. Durde can wait under his wing, but the offensive coordinator has to be ready NOW.
This could imply that with the ability to interview all available candidates — not just leftovers — that Seattle will prioritize experience with their next hire. Macdonald’s former boss Jim Harbaugh was able to hire Greg Roman for the Chargers last year because of their prior experience together. L.A. really wasn’t much better than the Seahawks, but they protected the ball better than Seattle and had a clear offensive philosophy.
We should expect Macdonald’s OC2 to have experience and someone who has proven to know how to call a game, not just plays.
Seaside Joe lives in Southern California and that means: No Power!!! We are safe from the fires and the smoke but I wanted to make sure that I was able to get you a newsletter about the Seahawks today just in case, so I’m posting this from my phone.
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Seaside Joe 2140
Thank you SSJ and stay safe.
When you are forming up a band, don’t hire a guitar player to play fiddle.
I grew up playing fretted instruments, and played in a trio that got some gigs as a guitar player. If you handed me a fiddle and said “ok play THIS now” I would not have had a clue.
But it so happens that a fiddle came into my life and I have learned how to play it passably well.
So.
Grubb knows how to build a pass-based offense and knows the rhythm of the game from that perspective but he doesn’t know how to build a ground-game based offense. He can learn, and might even be great at it down the road!
But for MM’s band… not a fit now.