New era Seahawks make official 7 assistant coaches. Coordinators’ total NFL experience: 0
The path John Schneider is leading the Seahawks down, post-Pete Carroll is not just new.
It is fresh.
The three coordinators? They are NFL firsts.
The team officially announced Tuesday the hiring of seven assistants under new coach Mike Macdonald, the NFL’s youngest head coach. Seattle hired former Washington Huskies play caller Ryan Grubb to be the offensive coordinator, former Dallas Cowboys defensive line coach Aden Durde as the new defensive coordinator and former University of Michigan assistant Jay Harbaugh as special-teams coordinator.
The combined NFL experience in their jobs for the Seahawks’ new coordinators: Zero.
That matches the head-coaching experience, at any level, for their boss, the 36-year-old Macdonald.
“We underachieved in 2023. We all did,” Schneider said last month after team chair Jody Allen fired Carroll. “And now we’re in a situation where we all need to get better. We understand that the 12s, the fans, the community, Jody, everybody in this building deserves better. We had high expectations for 2023. We overachieved in 2022, quite frankly. We underachieved in 2023.
“It’s a time for all of us to look in the mirror in this organization, myself included obviously, and improve, learn and move forward.”
The GM and the Seahawks have certainly learned and moved forward in the four weeks since Schneider said that.
It’s shaping up to be a invigorating, fascinating experiment for the players, coaches and franchise.
Ryan Grubb, fans’ folk hero
The story of how we all learned the Seahawks were getting Grubb to leave Alabama days will live on in Seattle lore.
Grubb will always be the Dawg’s Deal Done by Dino’s.
Friday night, fans noticed Schneider and Macdonald hosting Grubb at Dino’s, a bar and restaurant across Interstate 405 from Seahawks headquarters in Renton. Any Seattle football fan beyond casual knows Grubb, 47, and what he looks like. That’s from his last two seasons directing the Washington Huskies’ high-flying, deep-strike passing offensive with quarterback Michael Penix Jr.
Friday night, multiple fans began posting online coy, don’t-want-them-to-see-me-take-it pictures off their mobile phones of Grubb with Schneider and Macdonald at Dino’s.
Not long after came confirmation the Seahawks were about to announce the hiring of Grubb to replace departed Shane Waldron as their offensive play caller.
The Seahawks had been considering Grubb for weeks. A league source told The News Tribune the day Macdonald was introduced in Seattle Feb. 1 that Grubb was a candidate under consideration by Schneider and Macdonald to be the team’s new OC.
Then last week Grubb told an influential booster group in Tuscaloosa on national scholarship signing day he was the Crimson Tide’s new offensive coordinator. He had been recruiting for weeks for Alabama, having come there with former UW coach Kalen DeBoer to lead the Tide after Nick Saban retired last month as Bama’s coach.
Two days later, he was in Dino’s with Schneider and Macdonald as the Seahawks’ new OC.
Grubb has only two years of experience at the college football’s major, Power-5 level as an offensive play caller. He came to UW with DeBoer from calling Fresno State’s plays before the 2022 season.
Macdonald said on KIRO-AM radio Monday he admired Grubb’s bevy of pre-snap motion and formation shifts at Washington.
“That gives defenses fits — and gives quarterbacks answers,” the new Seahawks coach said. “And that’s good for us.”
Macdonald noted how well Washington also ran the ball under Grubb.
Grubb’s calls for Penix to throw deep balls to soon-to-be-first-round pick Rome Odunze and UW’s waves of top receivers hid the fact Huskies halfback Dillon Johnson ran for 1,195 yards and 16 touchdowns this past season. When Johnson was injured and rendered ineffective in the national-title game last month, Washington’s offense went nowhere in UW’s final-game loss to Michigan.
Carroll was well-known for valuing his chief trait in his quarterbacks: minimizing risk. That and locker-room respect were the edges Geno Smith had over Drew Lock in winning Seattle’s starting quarterback job two years ago. In training camp before the team’s 2022 season Carroll called Lock, who led the NFL in interceptions in his second year starting for Denver in 2020, a “gunslinger.”
“You have to be aggressive,” Macdonald said. “And you do that through calculated risk. “Those are the things that you have to be measured about. We’re not just going to be chucking the ball all over the yard every down. That’s not the way to win in the NFL. ...You’ve got to be able to run the ball. And you’ve got to be able to protect it.
“But there’s going to be opportunities to throw the football down the field and to get the ball on the perimeter. Obviously, those things are imperative to win in the NFL.”
The 2 other coordinators
Harbaugh is even younger than Macdonald. At 34, Harbaugh is the same age as Seahawks Pro Bowl mainstay Nick Bellore, as the captain of the special-teams unit Harbaugh is now coaching.
Durde, 44, is the first British-born coordinator in the NFL. He was born in Middlesex, England. He told NFLUK’s podcast The Hard Yards last year he played some ice hockey growing up. He also had a friend who lived down the street from him in London who owned an American football. He began playing with that.
He played for the London Olympians, an American football team in England’s second tier of the sport. Durde then got scouted to play linebacker for the Scottish Claymores in NFL Europe in 2003-04. He spent some time in the 2005 NFL offseason with the Carolina Panthers before he returned to NFL Europe playing for Hamburg from 2005-07. His playing career ended after some time in the 2008 offseason with the Kansas City Chiefs.
He began coaching in the NFL only six years ago, as a quality-control assistant.
Durde (Der-dee) has been coaching Dallas’ line for former Seahawks defensive coordinator Dan Quinn’s Cowboys defense the last three seasons.
Macdonald, the coordinator for Baltimore’s defense that led the NFL in points allowed, sacks and turnovers this past season, has said he will be calling Seattle’s defensive plays.
The Seahawks ranked 30th in the 32-team league defense this past season, and 31st against the run. That’s why they didn’t make the playoffs for only the third time in 12 years. It’s why they fired Carroll.
“Ultimately, I’m the head coach of the football team, so I want to coach the football team,” Macdonald said the day the Seahawks hired him as their ninth head coach last month. “Right now, the best way that we can win in my opinion is for me to call the plays, and then when it becomes obvious that someone else is ready to go and we see it the same way, then we’ll make that change.”
With the new head coach calling the defense and its plays, it fit that the “defensive coordinator” would be a promoted position coach younger in the profession, whom Macdonald could develop.
Durde is that.
The experience: Leslie Frazier
The experience Macdonald will lean on will come largely from 64-year-old Leslie Frazier. The Seahawks officially announced the former Minnesota Vikings head coach and most recently Buffalo Bills defensive coordinator as Seattle’s assistant head coach. Macdonald and Frazier worked together on the Baltimore Ravens’ coaching staff in 2016.
Macdonald has said Frazier will be his trusted advisor for running a defensive and team.
The other assistants, already known hires, the Seahawks made official on Tuesday: former University of Washington offensive line coach Scott Huff returning with Grubb to Seattle from Alabama to coach Seattle’s offensive line; former Green Bay Packers and 22-year NFL assistant Kirk Olivadotti as inside linebackers coach; and Karl Scott back as defensive passing game coordinator coaching the defensive backs.
Huff was UW’s offensive line coach from 2017 to last month. His Huskies were voted as having the best O-line in college football last season.
Grubb also has experience as an offensive-line coach, including at Fresno State. The Seahawks’ O-line is likely to have at least three new starters at its five positions in 2024.
Olivadotti, 50, began his NFL coaching career as an assistant defensive backs coach with Washington in 2000. He was the linebackers coach at the University of Georgia from 2011-13, when Macdonald was beginning his college coaching career as a volunteer intern then graduate assistant at his alma mater.
Scott is so far the only holdover from Carroll’s staff of 2023.
The Seahawks fired the 72-year-old Carroll Jan. 10 after his 14 seasons as their coach and ultimate football decision-maker and path-setter.
Allen chose Schneider’s path forward following a 9-8 season, Seattle’s third in 12 years that didn’t include a playoff berth.
It’s obvious Schneider’s path is so very different. And fresh.
“We have a clear directive from Jody Allen moving forward...it’s clear. It’s concise,” Schneider said last month. “We want to keep our positive culture. Everything that’s been created here. Everything in this building. ...
“If you’re stagnant in this league, you’re behind. I think that’s probably the most intriguing thing, is to learn and be open-minded.”
This story was originally published February 13, 2024 at 3:19 PM with the headline "New era Seahawks make official 7 assistant coaches. Coordinators’ total NFL experience: 0."
