Former Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak needed one final season in which to prove he should be a head coach. Before he stopped in Seattle in 2025, he had been an OC twice before. He got most noticed after the Seahawks were so good this season.
Now, Kubiak is the head coach for the Las Vegas Raiders, and Seattle needed to replace him. The search took only a couple of weeks and landed on former San Francisco 49ers run game coordinator Brian Fleury. He was officially introduced at a press conference on Thursday by head coach Mike Macdonald.
To be sure, Fleury wasted zero time in proving how impressive he was. He was well-spoken and talked about how he had coached defense and offense previously, and how that experience is going to help him quickly dissect what an opponent is trying to do and how to use that against them.
New Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator Brian Fleury's words should have 12s fired up
He also mentioned how one important aspect of his first year will be making sure that some of the concepts used by Kubiak stay in place. Both Kubiak and Fleury come from the same coaching philosophy (the Kubiak and Kyle Shanahan trees are basically the same), and why mess with a great thing? He will add new wrinkles, of course.
But two words he used to describe his approach are the ones worth noting: "Fast and violent." That is what he wants his offense to be. No, he has never called offensive plays before, but the play-calling was immaterial to understanding the situation of the game. Moreover, the pre-game mentality outweighed all.
For Brian Fleury, what happens from play-to-play, while important, isn't what wins or loses the game. It is the mindset and belief of the coaches in a system, and the buy-in from players in the system. If it works from day one of minicamp, it will likely work into the regular season and then the playoffs.
He isn't wrong, of course. A design of a play might seem brilliant on paper, but until it is put into practice successfully, and repeated at the same level of success, no player is going to think what is given to them works. With Fleury, he has been in schemes, like the one he is leaving with the 49ers, that work year-in and year-out.
They are almost certainly going to work for the Seattle Seahawks, too. Will the run-game still be important with Fleury? Definitely, and maybe even more importantly than Kubiak? Red-zone offense has to be spot-on, too. But the mentality of his offense entering a season and any given game, Brian Fleury is going to have that down.