New coaches, new blockers, one scheme. Inside the Seahawks’ O-line improvement plan
They are the most criticized Seahawks players. They have been that for most of the last decade.
They are learning their third blocking system and third offensive system in three years.
Last year, they had two coaches with a combined zero years of NFL coaching experience.
This year, they have two new coaches with a combined 47 years of coaching experience.
Will those coaches make the 2025 Seattle offensive linemen what they absolutely have to be for this team to win: Better?
The blockers who have been here the longest say their new coaches’ emphasis is to do fewer things, and do them better.
“I’ll put it like this: We’re trying to be elite at very few things, but those few things are what the offense is going to be based around. And that’s the run game,” fourth-year right tackle Abe Lucas said before the Seahawks minicamp and offseason practice for the veterans ended Wednesday.
“We’re going to be elite at the run game,” Lucas said. “That’s the philosophy with it.”
Yeah, well, every Seahawks team through 15 years of Pete Carroll, a decade of Mike Holmgren, back to the 1980 Ground Chuck Seahawks of coach Chuck Knox have said they wanted to run the ball.
Yet Seattle was 27th in the NFL in rushing offense in 2023. That’s the season that got Carroll and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron fired.
The Seahawks brought in an all-new coaching staff and system last season — and finished 28th in rushing in 2024.
Now they’ve brought in yet another new coaching staff and offensive scheme. What’s different now?
A clear directive to do one, clear and proven scheme very well: Outside-zone run blocking Mike Shanahan won Super Bowls with in the 1990s.
“Everybody wants to run the ball. But when you come in and it’s kind of a non-negotiable that we’re running the ball, that’s different,” Lucas said.
“So, it’s not some hodgepodge of just a bunch of different stuff we’re just throwing in.”
That’s what former University of Washington assistants Scott Huff and Ryan Grubb tried and failed to do last Seahawks season. It was the second consecutive and third in four years without a playoff berth for Seattle.
So second-year head coach Mike Macdonald and 15-year general manager John Schneider changed the scheme. They changed the offensive line’s coaches, to 1990s Denver Broncos Super Bowl-champion assistant Rick Dennison and 19-year NFL line coach John Benton. Dennison and Benton have worked before with Klint Kubiak, the Shanahan disciple who is replacing Grubb as Seattle’s new offensive coordinator.
They are emphasizing fast, lateral movement at the snap, “running off the ball,” in Kubiak’s and Macdonald’s words. The linemen are being asked to block an area, a wide zone, for running plays rather than specific defenders lined up over them. In fact, blockers will run by defenders to get to their assigned zone.
How all this works is the key to the Seahawks’ 2025 season.
If the new system succeeds, new quarterback Sam Darnold could flourish with a complementary passing game against defenses that have to play Seattle far more honestly, respecting the running game.
If it fails, so will Darnold — and the entire Seahawks season.
New offensive linemen for the new system
The Seahawks drafted three new offensive linemen this spring. That included Grey Zabel, their highest-drafted guard since they selected eventual Hall of Famer Steve Hutchinson in the first round in 2001. Hutchinson scouted Zabel for the Seahawks. He recommended they select the North Dakota State standout 18th overall in late April.
Macdonald and Schneider also drafted the endangered NFL species called a fullback. He’s 275-pound college tight end Robbie Outzts.
During the first four plays of offseason practices open to reporters, Kubiak had the first-team offense run I formation. It had a fullback leading the tailback on toss sweeps outside.
It looked like USC’s 1978 Student Body Right with Heisman Trophy winner Charles White.
It looked nothing like the 2024 — or 2023, or 2013 and ‘03 — Seahawks.
“We put a fullback in the backfield,” Lucas said. “We’re changing it up. We’re doing things differently.
It’s like an old-school mentality with a new-school principle sort of thing. ...
“We’re going to be elite at the basics, and make sure that they work so we can do it against anybody.”
Lucas is entering his fourth Seahawks and NFL season, a contract year. He was limited through the first months of last season by effects from patella-tendon surgery in his knee in January 2024, then played the rest of last season less than fully healthy.
Through organized team activities (OTAs) and minicamp, he already feels this line and this offense is different.
Asked how good this new O-line can be after years of bad, Lucas said: “However good we want to be.
“We have the right coaching, the right tools. The identity has definitely changed from last year to this year. It’s on us as far as we want to take it.”
Then again, Lucas said this about all the criticism Seattle’s offensive line has gotten over recent, failed seasons: “The only criticism I really am concerned about is the stuff that’s in this building.
“Everybody has an opinion. I have an opinion on a lot of things. That doesn’t mean it matters.”
Already starting competitions
Six weeks before training camp begins July 23, three of the five spots on Seattle’s line are already set for the 2025 season.
The team picked up the fifth-year contract option of left tackle Charles Cross. That guarantees he’ll be there this year, and next. Lucas is the bookend at right tackle. He says he’s healthier than he’s been since he played at Washington State. That was in 2021.
Zabel has been starting at left guard since the first day of offseason practice. That’s why they drafted him in the first round.
Zabel was the fastest lineman off the ball getting to his assigned zones to block in OTAs and minicamp. He noticeably jumped off the snap laterally to his spot.
“Grey has been incredible so far,” Cross said this week.
Center and right guard are up for grabs.
Jalen Sundell, Zabel’s teammate at North Dakota State and an undrafted rookie backup last year, split starting-center reps almost evenly with Olu Oluwatimi in OTAs and minicamp. Oluwatimi, the fifth-round pick in 2023 out of Michigan who won the Rimington Award as college football’s best center that year, was Seattle’s starter to end last season. But that was only because Connor Williams abruptly quit and retired at age 27 in late October.
Seahawks coaches are raving that this new system fits Sundell so much better than the mix of pulling, trapping, man and zone blocking Huff and Grubb tried and failed with last year.
Christian Haynes and Anthony Bradford split the plays evenly at right guard with the starting offense in offseason practices. The Seahawks drafted Haynes last year, in the third round. They drafted Bradford in 2023, in round four. Sataoa Laumea was the Plan-C right guard to finish last season. The team drafted Laumea last year, in the sixth round.
No way to tell who gained an edge without full pads and full physicality. That’s what training camp is for.
Macdonald said this week he’d like to have starters set on the line “sooner than later,” once pads come on in training camp. That could mean by early to mid August.
Bradford began last year as the starter in a season. Macdonald said Bradford knows he must impress in training camp.
“A.B. has done a great job this spring. His body comp has really improved, which speaks to his work ethic,” Macdonald said. “I think he’s made strides.
“Now, let’s go. You know, it’s time to go prove it consistently. He knows that. “But he’s right in the thick of it with the battle at right guard.
“’Taoa’ is part of that equation,” Macdonald added. “The rookies really haven’t seen live and in color. So I wouldn’t say it’s a two-man race right now. It’s more wide open.”
Abe Lucas ‘night and day’ from 2024
Benton’s commanding the offensive-line room. The 61-year old began coaching when Ronald Reagan was president. That was 1987.
He’s coached lines for the Rams, Texans, Dolphins, Jaguars, 49ers, Jets and Saints (last year, with Kubiak) in the NFL.
Lucas, 26, said he and his fellow Seahawks blockers would “be dumb not to listen” to Benton and to the 66-year-old Dennison.
“The first thing that sticks out is experience, obviously,” Lucas said. “He’s (Benton) been everywhere and coached a lot of people. Really, that’s the main thing. He’s just a wealth of knowledge.
“I’m looking forward to learning from him more.”
Benton had veteran swing tackle Josh Jones, a backup most of his five-year career signed from Baltimore this offseason, spelling Lucas at times in OTAs and minicamp. That appeared to be a pacing hedge toward rounding Lucas’ knee into full health for the fall.
Asked to compare his knee Carroll once called a chronic issue now to last season, Lucas said: “Night and day.
“It helps when you’re not in a brace and you can actually walk without crutches. You guys have seen, I post on social media me lifting and it sends everybody into a frenzy, which I think is kind of funny.
“But I’m doing good work, so I’m excited about it.”
He looks to have lost weight through all the training this winter into spring. But the 6-foot-6 Lucas says he’s actually above his listed playing weight of 322 pounds.
“I’m 325,” he said. “I saw that, too; everybody thought I was like 280. I’m 325.
“Rest assured, I’m good.”
This story was originally published June 13, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
