Seahawks to hire Mike Solari as offensive line coach
By Lee Vowell
The Seahawks will hire Mike Solari to be the new offensive line coach, according to reports. Solari replaces Tom Cable. But how good of a hire is Solari?
The Seahawks have now seemingly replaced possibly the three most important assistant coaches on their staff. With the hire of Mike Solari as offensive line coach, Seattle will start anew in 2018. Whether Solari is a good enough coach to make Seattle’s offensive line better is debatable.
Solari was Seattle’s offensive line coach in 2008 and 2009 under Mike Holmgren. In fact, since 1987 he has only been an offensive line coach in the NFL, except for the two years he spent with the University of Alabama from 1990-91. Interesting that Solari has never been promoted beyond being an offensive line coach, yes?
Solari basically teaches zone blocking, a lot like Cable did. Possibly Solari can get the Seahawks linemen to understand a bit better what they need to do than Cable. But Solari was most recently with the New York Giants the last two years. And the Giants stunk the last two seasons.
In fact, Solari was heavily criticized during his years with the Giants. Eli Manning was under pressure as much as any quarterback in the NFL. And New York hardly had any consistent running game.
Seahawks’ new hires are not great on paper
And really, Solari finishes a trifecta of underwhelming assistant coach hires by Pete Carroll this offseason. New offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer has never produced a top-ten offense. Defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. did not get a defense to be ranked in the top-twenty of points-allowed during his three seasons with the Oakland Raiders.
And Solari doesn’t impress as the new offensive line coach. He has had a long career, yes. But he also hasn’t done anything more than coach an offensive line. Hopefully, though, Solari will get Justin Britt and company to produce better results in 2018.
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Carroll wants his team to run well. He trusts Solari. Now Solari needs to get Seahawks fans to trust him, too.