Source to TNT: Seahawks expected to hire ex-UW Huskies play caller Ryan Grubb as new OC
John Schneider wasn’t kidding when he said he is seeking to “change the marketplace” with his new coaching hires in this absolutely new Seahawks era post-Pete Carroll.
Ryan Grubb is coming back to Seattle. Almost as if he never left.
A league source told The News Tribune Friday night the Seahawks are expected to hire Grubb, the Washington Huskies’ play-calling coach through UW’s national championship game last month, to be Seattle’s new offensive coordinator.
The source said the Seahawks are likely to make Grubb’s deal official within days.
Mike Macdonald is the NFL’s youngest head coach Seattle just hired at age 36 to replace the fired 72-year-old Carroll. Macdonald is a defensive mind; he was coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens’ league-leading defense, record-setting defensive this past season. The conventional thinking was he would want a veteran NFL play caller for his Seahawks offense.
So much for that.
When asked last week how important NFL play-calling experience was in hiring a new offensive coordinator, Macdonald foreshadowed Friday night’s news.
“It’s not near the top of the list,” Macdonald said last week.
“We’re looking for the right person to come in here and build this thing, so we want somebody that’s open-minded, that has a growth mindset. That can connect with their players, and build a system that’s unique to the Seattle Seahawks that’s going to live here for a long time and who’s going to be the one spearheading it.”
That is now Grubb. He has zero NFL experience.
Schneider, Seattle’s general manager, was “outside the box” hiring Macdonald to be a first-time head coach, at half Carroll’s age.
Hiring Grubb is outside the box-ier.
He becomes the first Seahawks offensive coordinator hired with no NFL coaching experience in almost 30 years — since former Washington State University offensive coordinator Bob Bratkowski was Seattle’s OC on its 1995-98 teams.
The Seahawks, Schneider and Macdonald decided on their new offensive and defensive coordinators in the same day. Earlier Friday, a league source told the TNT Seattle is expected to hire former Dallas Cowboys defensive line coach Aden Durde to be the Seahawks’ defensive coordinator. He’s the first British-born coordinator in NFL history.
Macdonald said last week he is going to call the defense’s 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 Jan. 10.
Ryan Grubb’s UW splash, ‘Bama dash
Grubb is 47. But he has only two seasons of play calling experience at the top, Power-5-conference level of college football. He’s a former hog farmer back in his native Iowa.
He came with new Huskies head coach Kalen DeBoer from being Fresno State’s offensive coordinator to Washington before the 2022 college season.
A league source had told the TNT last week Grubb was “under consideration” for the Seahawks’ OC job. That was while he was reportedly recruiting for DeBoer at Alabama.
Grubb left UW last month after DeBoer, for whom Grubb has worked for years at multiple levels of college football, left Washington to coach Alabama. DeBoer left four days after the Huskies lost to Michigan in the national title game Jan. 8. He replaced retired Nick Saban.
This week, on national signing day for football scholarships, Grubb introduced himself to Alabama boosters in Tuscaloosa as Alabama’s new offensive coordinator.
But, tellingly, Alabama never officially announced Grubb as hired and its new OC.
Two days later, Grubb was in Renton, home of the Seahawks’ headquarters, meeting with Seahawks general manager Johnson and Macdonald. Grubb was photographed by fans at a bar with Schneider and Macdonald.
The league source told the TNT of the expected deal between the Seahawks and Grubb within an hour or so of that photo going viral online. An announcement of Grubb’s hiring by the Seahawks to replace Shane Waldron from Carroll’s staff could come early next week.
The Seahawks’ social-media team joined in the fun of how this news broke by posting on X Friday night an emoji of two beer mugs clanging.
He will leave Alabama days after signing day, without coaching a practice let alone a game for the Crimson Tide. Such is the state of college football with coaches jumping like frogs plus NIL and transfer portals making players free agents.
And multiple reports later Friday night said Grubb is bringing back with him to Seattle Scott Huff, UW’s former offensive line coach who left with DeBoer to Alabama. That is for Huff to be the Seahawks’ new offensive line coach, replacing departed Andy Dickerson from Carroll’s staff.
Ryan Grubb’s background
Grubb was born in Kingsley, a town of just over 1,300 people in the northwest part of Iowa. He has risen rapidly from his first coaching job making an estimated $1,700 a year as an offensive coordinator at his hometown Kingsley-Pierson High School in 2003 and ‘04 to becoming an assistant at lower-division South Dakota State in 2005.
He met DeBoer while an assistant at NAIA University of Sioux Falls, where they won national championships on DeBoer’s staff. Grubb followed DeBoer to Eastern Michigan and, for the 2019 season, to Fresno State.
Grubb came with DeBoer from Fresno to UW in December 2021, when the Huskies fired Jimmy Lake and hired DeBoer as head man.
With Grubb calling signature, deep-strike pass plays to make quarterback Michael Penix Jr. a Heisman Trophy runner-up, DeBoer’s two wondrous seasons turning around Washington included a 21-game winning streak. That ended in the title-game loss to Michigan Jan. 8.
Grubb was considered a candidate to replace DeBoer as UW’s coach in the days after DeBoer left for Alabama last month in the wake of Nick Saban abruptly retiring. When Washington hired ex-Arizona coach Jedd Fisch instead, Grubb appeared to have joined DeBoer to become Alabama’s new offensive coordinator.
That is, until Friday night at Dino’s, across Interstate 405 from Seahawks headquarters.
This story was originally published February 9, 2024 at 9:46 PM.
