Seahawks making a run for it

I was surprised when the Seahawks hired Ryan Grubb to serve as Mike Macdonald’s offensive coordinator.

Being a defensive coach, I expected Macdonald would contract out the offense to someone with more experience. While I didn’t think Chip Kelly was a good idea, he had some NFL experience.

When Grubb wound up being hired, I came to the conclusion that Macdonald must have seen something truly special in the way Grubb saw the game. More specifically, I thought Macdonald found what Grubb did schematically to be something of a nightmare for a defensive coordinator and he decided he wanted his counterparts across the league to try and solve that riddle.

Seventeen regular-season games later?

Yeah, that didn’t go so well. We’re going to be starting over on offense. We’ll get into that in just a bit. 

But first, I’ve got something a little more personal to share.

🎄 An absolute tree-for-all 🎄 

Christmas in New York is a fairly magical time. Living here, I’ve come to understand just how much of our country’s holiday imagery is rooted in this place. For good reason. It’s quite lovely, and there has been quite a bit written about it.

Not as much has been written about what the city looks like in the weeks after the holiday, however, which is too bad because it’s freaking hilarious.

Perhaps you know that New York does not employ cans or bins for trash pick-up. We throw our plastic bags of trash on the sidewalk where they are picked up by sanitation workers and literally thrown into the truck. Now the story of how this came to be – and the current attempts to change it – are a story for another day.

For now, all you need to know is that in New York, we don’t put our cans out for collection so much as we place the trash on the street.

Guess what we do with Christmas trees?

Yup. Same thing. In fact, in the weeks after Christmas, you’ll find trees deposited on sidewalks outside apartment buildings, on sidewalks leading to parks, on pathways in parks. You get the idea. Over the past week I snapped a few photos while walking my dog just so you can see.

Now, I will admit that I’m not altogether comfortable with this. It seems like something an uncivilized – or at least unincorporated – region would do. However, it seems to work. You put your tree out on a public walkway and someone – eventually – will come along and haul it off to wherever it is all the trash generated by this city winds up. Probably New Jersey.

OK. Now where were we?

Oh yeah, the Seahawks offense.

It just so happens that the last time Seattle had a new head coach, he fired his offensive coordinator after one year, too. That was Jeremy Bates following the 2010 season.

A couple of differences, however:

1) Bates had worked with Pete Carroll prior to coming to Seattle. Bates had been Carroll’s offensive coordinator the previous season at USC;

2) Carroll’s decision didn’t have anything to do with scheme or play calling. In fact, when I saw Carroll that offseason, he called Bates a genius when it came to the architecture of an offense.

The issue with Bates was about the energy and approach to coaching. What the kids refer to as “vibes.” He was a fairly dour presence. A joyless grinder who preferred an office without windows and conducted interviews through clenched teeth. That’s not how Pete wanted his coaches to work.

Now I don’t know how Grubb fit in with the culture that Macdonald is trying to establish. I’m not there in the building like I used to be.

However, from what I’ve heard and everything Macdonald has said, it sure seems like this is more rooted in football than it is any sort of personal style. More specifically, it’s about the running game or lack thereof.

Of the Seahawks ran 1,030 offensive plays this season, only 383 were runs. In percentage terms, that is the lowest run rate in franchise history.

But before we move on and just conclude that Grubb was someone who wasn’t going to run the ball as much as Seattle’s head coach wanted, I’d like to note that the third-lowest percentage of run plays is from last year, and I don’t think anyone would doubt Pete Carroll’s belief in the run or desire to so. 

It’s possible, I might even say likely, that the lack of rushes this season did not reflect a reluctance to run the ball so much as a continuing inability to do so effectively.

Just to be clear, I’m not arguing that the Seahawks shouldn’t have fired Grubb. I am very skeptical about some of the stuff Grubb imported. Specifically, I think the tempos and motions led to too many penalties. Now it’s possible – maybe even likely – that would have improved with time, but if Macdonald decided Grubb wasn’t the right fit for what he wanted, it’s best to turn the page now and get a full hiring cycle to find an upgrade. 

The point I do think is worth making is that if you try and distil this offense’s issues down to Grubb’s reluctance to run the football, I think you’re missing a larger point: The reasons for the offensive inconsistency go beyond the guy who was calling the plays.