The head coaching moves around the league tend to suck up all the oxygen at this time of year, but I notice the Seahawks fired offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb. For our fantasy purposes, that’s an impactful move.
Grubb is a good coordinator. He has shown he put together a high-level passing game. He was pulling the strings for the University of Washington offense that up big numbers two years ago, with Michael Penix and Rome Odunze getting selected with top-10 draft picks.
And Grubb had some success at the NFL level. At the halfway point of last year, the Seahawks were averaging a league-high 288 passing yards per game. Grubb won’t be unemployed for long. (I expect he’ll be a coordinator at the college or pro level.)
But Grubb doesn’t call the kind of game that Mike Macdonald wants. Macdonald is one of those “complementary football” guys, more interested in field position, time of possession and avoiding turnovers. He seems to be more interested in developing a steady running game that he can pair with an improving defense.
Seattle’s run game was below-average last year, averaging only 96 yards. Only four teams ran for fewer yards. That’s not all on Grubb; the team doesn’t have much of an offensive line. But he at times drifted away from the run too quickly. In the home loss against the Giants, most painfully, Kenneth Walker and Zach Charbonnet (against a bottom-5 run defense) combined for only 7 carries for 30 yards.
So I’m marking this down as an offense that will be headed in a new direction. I don’t think they’ll be passing as much, and it’s really a change that started last year. The Seahawks averaged a league-high 288 passing yards in the first nine weeks of the season, but they ranked only 20th the rest of the way. Seattle’s passing production declined by 65 yards in the second half of the season, the largest decline in the league.
Macdonald indicates Geno Smith will be coming back. They’ve also got that nice one-two punch of receivers, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and DK Metcalf. But I don’t think they’ll working as hard to get the ball in the hands of those guys.
PASSING YARDS PER GAME | ||
---|---|---|
Weeks 1-9 | Weeks 10-18 | Difference |
288 Seattle | 334 Cincinnati | 85 Cincinnati |
268 Dallas | 314 Detroit | 78 Detroit |
265 Tampa Bay | 270 Minnesota | 59 Arizona |
264 Baltimore | 265 Tampa Bay | 55 Miami |
263 San Francisco | 263 Miami | 54 Denver |
260 Atlanta | 261 Las Vegas | 47 Tennessee |
249 Cincinnati | 258 Arizona | 41 New England |
248 Houston | 258 San Francisco | 41 Cleveland |
246 LA Rams | 253 Denver | 35 Las Vegas |
244 Green Bay | 250 Cleveland | 29 Carolina |
243 Minnesota | 243 Atlanta | 27 Minnesota |
243 Kansas City | 242 Buffalo | 20 LA Chargers |
239 Washington | 239 LA Chargers | 19 Buffalo |
238 NY Jets | 236 LA Rams | 7 Pittsburgh |
237 Detroit | 235 Tennessee | 7 Indianapolis |
226 Jacksonville | 234 NY Jets | 2 Chicago |
226 Las Vegas | 234 Kansas City | 0 New Orleans |
223 Buffalo | 226 Baltimore | 0 Tampa Bay |
222 Philadelphia | 223 Washington | -3 NY Jets |
220 New Orleans | 223 Seattle | -4 San Francisco |
219 LA Chargers | 219 New Orleans | -5 NY Giants |
210 NY Giants | 218 New England | -8 Kansas City |
209 Cleveland | 217 Green Bay | -9 LA Rams |
209 Indianapolis | 216 Dallas | -15 Jacksonville |
208 Pittsburgh | 216 Carolina | -15 Washington |
208 Chicago | 216 Pittsburgh | -17 Atlanta |
208 Miami | 215 Indianapolis | -27 Green Bay |
199 Arizona | 215 Houston | -28 Philadelphia |
198 Denver | 211 Jacksonville | -32 Houston |
188 Tennessee | 210 Chicago | -38 Baltimore |
187 Carolina | 204 NY Giants | -51 Dallas |
178 New England | 194 Philadelphia | -65 Seattle |
Statistics compiled using search tools at Pro-Football-Reference.com
—Ian Allan