The word new Seahawks offensive coordinator Shane Waldron says most as an intro: ‘balance’
Shane Waldron has never been a play caller in the NFL.
The only offense he’s ever coordinated full-time was the one at Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, a day school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. That was in 2011.
Yet when Pete Carroll called the Los Angeles Rams’ pass-game coordinator, whom he did not know but knew of, last month on Zoom to begin multiple, virtual interviews for the job of Seahawks offensive coordinator, the 41-year-old Waldron was delighted that he didn’t have to prove himself to Carroll. All he to do was share his philosophy of offense with Seattle’s veteran head man.
“I mentioned this to him: It wasn’t like an interview where you are trying to sell yourself to win the job, in any sort of sales pitch. It was a conversation, it was a football discussion that had so many things in alignment,” Waldron said.
“It felt like a natural progression as we got to know each other. ... So many of those things were naturally in alignment.
“Going back to just that starting point, when we talk about where’s the starting point for our offense, it’s: ‘Hey, it’s all about the ball.’
“Well, lo and behold, what’s his starting point?”
Turnovers. Limiting them to near zero with sound, fundamentals in a run-based offense that sets up the pass.
That’s one reason the 69-year-old Carroll hired the 41-year-old native Pacific Northwesterner and huge Trail Blazers fan growing up in Portland to be Seattle’s fourth offensive coordinator since Carroll took over the Seahawks in 2010.
Another reason? It’s the word Waldron said more than any other in his 35-minute meeting with Seattle-area media on Tuesday.
“Balance.”
“We are going to be a balanced offense,” Waldron said, “that’s going to have that ability to create explosive plays with that attacking mindset. ...
“The balanced approach is really how I want to view this thing.”
Though the Seahawks set a franchise record with 459 points this past season, Carroll is convinced they wasted a 12-win season and first NFC West title in four years with a first-round playoff loss to Waldron’s Rams because they threw the ball too much. Defenses over the latter half of the season stayed in two-safeties-deep coverages and did not need to play Seattle more honestly between pass and run.
That’s why Carroll fired Brian Schottenheimer Jan. 11, two days after his third season as the Seahawks’ offensive coordinator ended with a thudding dud.
The Seahawks’ offensive linemen should not have to pass block in Waldron’s quicker-passing and more-run-based offense for as long as they had to while struggling in 2020 for all of Wilson’s long-developing deep throws — too many in Carroll’s mind. Wilson got sacked 48 times in 16 regular-season games. That was tied for third-most sacks absorbed in the NFL. Seattle went 58-42 in pass-run play-call percentage. That was out of whack with what Carroll wants.
With offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell and run-game coordinator Tom Cable calling the offense the Seahawks were 51% pass and 49% run in their 2013 Super Bowl-title season. They returned to the Super Bowl the following season running 54% of the time and throwing it 46%, in 2014.
Schottenheimer began his play-calling tenure for Carroll in Seattle running the ball 56% of the time, higher than in the Seahawks’ Super Bowl years. Seattle led the NFL in rushing that ‘18 season. The team finished 10-6 and lost at Dallas in the wild-card round of the playoffs.
The last two seasons, Schottenheimer relied more on Wilson throwing deep down the field, and went 11-5 and 12-4 in the last two regular seasons. Seattle was 52%-48% pass-rush in 2019, 58%-42% this past season. The Seahawks’ 411 rushing attempts in 2020 were their second-lowest since Carroll’s initial, tear-the-team-down season of 2010. The 2017 Seahawks ran 409 times.
This past season, the Seahawks were throwing nearly two-thirds of the time in September into October, particularly after top two running backs Chris Carson and Carlos Hyde got hurt.
Carroll said after Seattle’s season-ending playoff loss that the offense needed to “adapt better” to how defenses were playing it. Carroll said the Seahawks needed to have “more balance” on offense.
That balance isn’t just by running the ball more. It’s also to throw quicker, shorter passes based on the run. To help out Seattle’s offensive line that’s been porous against the Rams in the division and the best defenses in the league for years. To use the tight end more than the 25 receptions that was the most by a Seahawks one in 2020.
The aim is to be more varied, so defenses can’t just sit back in two-deep coverage as they did to end this past season and totally neutralize Russell Wilson and Seattle’s offense that led the league in passing against single-high, one-safety-deep coverage in the first half of the 2020 season.
Carroll’s view is he’s not a run-first coach. He’s a run-based one. He wants to use more of the run to give the offensive line a better chance to protect Wilson, and Wilson to have receivers DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett open more often down the field, so Seattle can maintain its explosiveness.
“It isn’t going to be 50 runs a game. We’re not doing that. I don’t want to do that,” Carroll said last month. “I want to explode with a throwing game.
“But we need to dictate to the way we’re being played, and better, and see if we can do that.”
Now he’s hired Waldron to see if they can do that.
Waldron has spent the last four years as pass-game coordinator in Rams coach Sean McVay’s offense. It’s a system based on the run, on play-action passes and bootlegs off it, with short, quick throws with a ton of crossing routes. The Rams’ system has also featured the tight end prominently for big plays in the passing game: Los Angeles’ Tyler Higbee and Gerald Everett have more catches than all tight ends on Seattle’s entire roster did in 2020.
That scheme has given Carroll’s defense problems for years.
Now Carroll is seeking it give his offense a solution.
Wilson’s approval
McVay has been the Rams’ play caller throughout his time as L.A.’s head man. Waldron praised McVay for “providing me a platform to grow,” such as giving him play-calling duties during preseason games in 2019.
Wilson last month called Carroll’s choice as new play caller “super critical” at this point in the 32-year-old quarterback’s career.
The Seahawks made sure he was involved in the process of hiring Waldron.
Waldron said he talked to Wilson before Carroll offered him the job, and since. The quarterback and his new coordinator have been seeking to get to know each other better, know about each other’s families, “who we are as people,” Waldron said, because of how much time they are going to spend together preparing for the season then each game.
“It seems he has this unrelenting desire to be better,” Waldron said of Wilson.
Waldron refuses to get into specifics on how the Seahawks’ offense will look or change in 2021 with him calling the plays instead of Schottenheimer. Waldron was particular evasive when asked how much Carroll has told him he wants the Rams’ staples—short, quick passes and bootleg plays based on the run and using the tight end—put into Seattle’s system.
“My approach, philosophically, is to get all 11 guys (on offense) involved,” is all Waldron said about that.
But Waldron did say this: “A balanced attack doesn’t mean that that’s a conservative attack. I don’t ever want to get that confused.
“That will really be the core philosophy that we live by, as far as the starting point with run-versus-pass, versus any other schematic things we want to get into.
“We want to have that balanced approach.”
This story was originally published February 2, 2021 at 1:57 PM.
