The Seattle Seahawks had great talent at all the skill positions but could rarely make it work. Now offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb will be looking for work himself, as the Hawks have let him go after one season in the NFL.
Ryan Grubb was hired to take the Seahawks' offense to the next level. Under Pete Carroll, previous OC Shane Waldron could never get any consistency from the unit from week to week. Hired away from the high-flying Rams, where he was their passing game coordinator, Waldron was expected to push the Hawks to the next level.
Instead, they plummeted like an osprey into Puget Sound but came up empty. In 202, the year before Waldron arrived, the Seahawks ranked 17th in yards, but eighth in points scored. I admit it, I was tired of Brian Schottenheimer's vanilla offense, too. I saw Waldron's arrival as the beginning of a dynamic duo with QB Russell Wilson. In my defense, the Hawks thought so too. We were all wrong.
The Seattle Seahawks fire Ryan Grubb for cause, as they say in HR
As it turned out, the Hawks were wrong when they hired Ryan Grubb away from the Washington Huskies. Technically, they whisked him away from the Crimson Tide. There's a good chance all parties would have been better off if Grubb had taken the job in Tuscaloosa after all.
The Seahawks certainly would have been better off. The Seahawks offense never improved under Waldron. Their ranking in points scored dropped from eighth the previous year to 16th in 2021. They improved to ninth in his second year, but that was still beneath Schottenheimer's last season. And in 2023, Seattle fell to 17th in points scored.
John Schneider and, more importantly, Jody Allen had seen enough. Waldron was shown the door, along with head coach Pete Carroll, who at the time was reported to have said that the team was on the right track.
Enter Ryan Grubb. He had quite a resume, it's true. The Huskies ranked sixth in the nation in scoring and yards under Grubb's tutelage. UDub featured a quick-strike offense that still fielded a 1,000-yard rusher. Bringing Grubb to the Hawks with the deep-ball artist Geno Smith and the talented receiver corps of Tyler Lockett, DK Metcalf, and Jaxon Smith-Njigba. With the explosive Kenneth Walker III and Zach Chabonett in the backfield, the Hawks were primed to take a huge step forward.
Instead, they regressed and regressed badly. Yes, they moved up a bit in rank, from 17th to 14th. But they only scored 11 more points than last season. When you fire a guy for running an inadequate offense and gain less than one point per game with a supposed innovator, that's clearly not enough. The Seahawks made the right move by letting him go after his first season.
No, it isn't great news for Grubb; of course not. No one should be celebrating this. But, it's still good news for the Seahawks and the 12s. Just as when the team moved on from their new inside linebacker duo in mid-season, firing Grubb proves this team isn't afraid to address issues quickly and decisively. That's a great sign for the future of this franchise.