Christian Haynes’ inside track to starting: This new Seahawks offense was his college love
There were multiple Seahawks pumped when the team hired Klint Kubiak and two of his assistants to change their offense this winter.
1. Sam Darnold. Seattle’s new quarterback has had Kubiak as his passing game coordinator, two years ago in San Francisco.
2. Kenneth Walker. The Seahawks’ lead rusher finally in his fourth NFL season has for the first time a Seattle play caller the head coach hired with the direct mandate to run the ball. Just in time, too. This year is the final one of Walker’s contract.
3. Christian Haynes.
Christian Haynes?
The third-round draft choice last year from Connecticut? He was a bit player for last season’s Seahawks. He had a difficult time getting on the field as a rookie in 2024. The guard played just 16% of the offense’s snaps last season. He was inactive for one game, and didn’t get a snap on offense in seven other games.
That’s about half the season he didn’t play on an offensive line that lacked and needed effective blockers. Line coach Scott Huff and offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb just didn’t play him, didn’t believe in him.
Now two practices into Kubiak’s first training camp as the Seahawks’ new offensive coordinator, with John Benton and Rick Dennison on staff providing 47 years combined of NFL experience coaching O-linemen, Haynes isn’t coming off the field.
Benton, Dennison and Kubiak are showing they believe in Haynes — to play two positions.
He’s been the right guard for Darnold on the first-team offense, ahead of 2023 draft choice Anthony Bradford, who has 21 starts the last two seasons for Seattle.
At times, Haynes has also played center. He last played that position for a few days in January 2024 at the Senior Bowl for NFL scouts.
“It’s just something that I haven’t really done a lot of,” Haynes told The News Tribune Thursday before the second practice of training camp, “but it’s been really great for me so far.”
So has Haynes’ spring and summer for the Seahawks.
Christian Haynes in his old college system
Haynes was miscast then mothballed last year.
Former line coach Scott Huff and since-fired offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb came from across Lake Washington at the University of Washington to be Haynes’ first NFL coaches. Huff and Grubb had the Seahawks’ offensive linemen last year running about every blocking scheme there is: Pulling, trapping, man-on-man drive, inside zone, outside zone.
Seattle’s blockers were practitioners of many skills, masters of none. The offense sputtered. The rushing offense was 29th in the 32-team league. The Seahawks missed the playoffs for the second consecutive season.
In the days after it ended this past January, coach Mike Macdonald and general manager John Schneider fired Grubb and Huff after just one season with them. They hired Kubiak, Benton and Dennison from the staff of the New Orleans Saints.
Macdonald’s mandates to the play caller and veteran line coaches: Install the outside-zone blocking scheme, only. And run the ball.
Kubiak has Seattle’s line, compared to 2024, practitioners of fewer trades to becomes masters of one. That one is outside-zone blocking.
When he heard his Seahawks had hired Kubiak and his pals, the 6-foot-2, 318-pound Haynes about ran through the walls of Velocity Athlete Development. That is the offensive-line training center in Canton, Georgia, outside Atlanta where he worked all this offseason.
While fellow Seahawks offensive linemen Charles Cross, Abe Lucas, Olu Oluwatimi, Abe Lucas and Bradford ran a potpourri of blocking schemes in Seattle the last few seasons, Haynes excelled playing in an outside-zone system in college. He started 49 consecutive games in it at UConn. His college coach was Jim Mora, a former UW player coached by Don James. Mora later became the Seahawks’ head coach, for one, failed season in 2009.
Haynes was in Mora’s outside-zone scheme from 2018 through the guard’s final college season of 2023. Haynes was a third-team All-American by The Associated Press in both his junior and senior seasons.
Yes, this new Seahawks offense is Haynes’ old college offense. He has a head start with the new coaches.
“It’s been really great,” Haynes said. “And then with Coach JB, I just learned (by) picking his brain.
“And then his technique is very similar we did at UConn in those. So I just used that as a little stepping stone.”
Haynes said when the direct Benton is drilling the Seahawks linemen, sometimes gruffly, on technique of footwork and handwork in the outside-zone scheme, it’s the same drills using the same language he got at UConn.
“So this, it’s just, really just fine tuning,” Haynes said, “like bringing it back out and fine tune everything.
“But it’s been great so far.”
Because of that familiarity, Haynes is ahead of the slimmed-down Bradford plus second-year man Sataoa Laumea, the 2024 sixth-round pick who started the final six games of last season at right guard. That was after Bradford got hurt, and Haynes proved to be unfit for last year’s scheme.
Benton has been an offensive line coach since his first job at it in 1995, at Colorado State. He’s been the O-line coach in the NFL since 2003 for the Rams, Texans, Dolphins, Jaguars, 49ers, Jets and Saints. All the while coaching outside zone from Dennison’s old Mike Shanahan Denver Broncos, Super Bowl champions in the 1990s.
Benton is teaching Haynes through video in the film room and direction on the field to be vertical in his runs off the ball in this Seahawks version of outside zone. Haynes said he ran move angular off the snap in college at UConn.
“I do my feet to make my angles more vertical, instead of more angular,” he said. “It’s all more lateral.”
Christian Haynes’ smarts, toughness
He has the smarts to start for the Seahawks.
Last year, UConn created an academic award for its football student-athletes. It’s the Christian Haynes Academic Excellence Award, named for the 25-year-old lineman who earned a bachelor’s then a master’s degree while playing for Connecticut.
Who was UConn’s first winner of the Christian Haynes Academic Award?
Christian Haynes.
How tough is Haynes?
“At UConn we are fortunate enough to play four Power-5 (opponents), which is great for a guy like Christian for the (NFL) scouts to see him play the best,” Gordie Sammis, Haynes’ college line coach, told the TNT last year. “And he hurt his ankle pretty bad the second drive against Boston College (Oct. 28, 2023). He just looked at me and said ‘Coach, my ankle’s bad. I ain’t comin’ out. Don’t worry about it.’
“For a guy like like that you may not necessarily want to play in those types of games, because you don’t want to look bad on tape.
“Then, when we played Tennessee the next week, which was a really big game for him as well, he was really getting after them early. At halftime you looked at me and said, ‘Halftime’s too damn long, Coach. The drugs are wearing off.’
“And then he just didn’t say another word and finished the whole game. He played 80-some plays.
“He very well could have (gone out). At halftime I would have taken him out, just because he didn’t want to look bad against very good players. And he could care less how bad he looked, he just wanted to play because he wanted to be out there with his guys.”
Christian Haynes’ Velocity training
Macdonald has praised Bradford, whom the Seahawks list at 6-4 and 330 pounds, for changing his body composition this offseason. He is entering his third season with Seattle, on his third line coach and offensive system in the NFL.
Macdonald said Bradford realizing this training camp is his key time.
Yet so far, early in camp, Haynes is holding him off. And when Haynes isn’t playing right guard, first (so far) center Jalen Sundell has been at times at right guard with the starting offense.
When he wasn’t at Seahawks headquarters in parts of April, May and June, Haynes was at Velocity in Georgia. He was recommended to by now-former Seahawks tackle Stone Forsythe, his teammate last season who signed this spring with the New York Giants.
“They drilled different, technique wise. Like in my stance, how to be more balanced in my stance,” Haynes said. “And they were really technical with everything they were doing.”
He says he distributes his weight in his stance better than he ever has. That, in turn, has given him added strength in his legs, and when he strikes defensive linemen coming out of his stance after the snap of the ball. Coaches have noticed he has better hip flexibility.
The name of this new Seahawks offensive-line game is speed off the ball, laterally. Haynes is so far proving he has that.
He proven it in the same system in college at UConn, too.
“Now, the speed of the game is now very slow,” Haynes said, comparing his rookie year to now.
“So for me, even though we’re in the new offense, (I’m) just being able to see things all way faster and able to communicate better.”
This story was originally published July 25, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Christian Haynes’ inside track to starting: This new Seahawks offense was his college love."
