Seahawks fans got what they wanted. Or did they not want this? I don’t know. It’s all very confusing.
Anyway, Brian Schottenheimer is out as offensive coordinator due to an apparent “philosophical” disagreement with Pete Carroll. After Schotty finally allowed Russell Wilson to #cook all season, which led to good early returns and ugly late returns, it appears Carroll desires a hasty return to the run-first glory days of your slightly older sibling’s youth.
With Seattle’s offense coming off of a record-breaking season, the timing of Carroll’s decision is a bit confusing. Yes, Russell Wilson looked broken by the end of the year, but Schottenheimer at least deserved a chance to right some wrongs in 2021.
He won’t get that chance.
Instead, it will be another play-caller tasked with designing an offense for Wilson. It’s a unique challenge. Not because Wilson isn’t a great quarterback — he is — but he doesn’t play the position in a structured way, so the task of designing plays for him is more like designing a set of guidelines for him to loosely follow.
Simply put, Wilson is a quarterback who can make a play-call “right” even when it’s wrong … and make one “wrong” even when it’s right.
This becomes most apparent in the quick game. Those pass plays where the ball is designed to come out quickly. The quarterback takes a quick drop, makes his read and gets the ball to the open man. Wilson does a lot of things at an elite level; executing quick game concepts is not one of them. And that was the biggest issue with the Seahawks offense after defenses adjusted and started taking away the deep shots that fueled the offense for the first two months.
Some Seahawks fans blamed Schottenheimer for those issues. The Seahawks seemingly never adjusted to those defensive adjustments and the offense stalled out. But I’m not sure it’s fair to blame all of that on Schottenheimer. The Seahawks ran plenty of quick game, but when the quarterback can’t see over the line — the football guys were right: QB height does matters — where all those easy completions are, it’s hard to develop an effective quick game package.
Wilson’s advanced numbers in that area aren’t great. They aren’t terrible either, but his boom-or-bust style — a lot of those “busts” are sacks — makes quick game a suboptimal strategy for a Wilson-led offense.
It’s not like a robust quick game package is a necessity in today’s NFL, anyway. There are other ways to stay ahead of the chains on early downs — RPO, screens, bootlegs or *gasp* running the ball — that better suit Wilson’s style of play.
Wilson is 32. He’s not getting any taller, either, so expecting him to evolve into Drew Brees at this point in his career is probably foolish. Instead of looking for an offensive coordinator who can turn Russ into that guy, the Seahawks should be looking for someone who will lean on his strengths — i.e. throwing the ball downfield. A play-action heavy approach that clears up the picture for Wilson would also be a plus. Early-down creativity — so no three yards and a cloud of dust guys, Pete — should be a requirement.
With all that in mind, let’s identify some candidates for the Seahawks offensive coordinator job.