RENTON, Wash. -- Back in 2018, then-Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll entered the offseason intent on reviving the team's stagnant run game. The first step was a change at offensive coordinator, with Brian Schottenheimer taking over for Darrell Bevell.
The Seahawks would lead the NFL in rushing yards that season in large part because Schottenheimer ran the ball more often than anyone else -- by a wide margin.
Seven years later, Mike Macdonald is undergoing a similar endeavor ... sort of.
Indeed, Macdonald hired offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak as Ryan Grubb's replacement to lean more on the run game than his fired predecessor did. But neither Kubiak's history nor his comments on Tuesday gave the impression that the shift will be as drastic as it was in 2018, when Seattle went from one of the least committed running teams to the very top of the league in that regard, with a designed rush rate of 49.3%.
Instead of Kubiak using his introductory news conference and subsequent radio interviews as a promise to pound the rock, his message centered around offensive balance, with an oft-repeated line about being able to beat defenses in multiple ways.
"Coach Macdonald has stressed from the beginning the things that he's looking for, and the type of offense that he seeks," Kubiak told Sports Radio 93.3 KJR-FM. "I'm excited that our brand of football does match that. We talked through that in the interview process, and we also have the same agreement that it's not always going to be one way. There's more than one way to win a game.
"Obviously we want to be a physical team that can run the football and play action and all those things, but then we've got to be at our best in those drop-back passing situations. So there's a lot that goes into it. I definitely believe that our priorities align."
The two offenses Kubiak previously coordinated finished outside the top 10 in designed rush rate, with the 2021 Minnesota Vikings ranking 11th (39.6%) and the 2024 New Orleans Saints 14th (39.8%). Over the six games in which Kubiak called plays for the Denver Broncos in the second half of 2022, they were 20th (35.9%).
When isolating each team's designed rush rate to moments in games in which the score differential was no more than eight points, the '21 Vikings dropped to 20th (39%), the '22 Broncos moved up to 16th (41.8%) and last season's Saints jumped to eighth (43%).
But any of that would qualify as run-heavy compared to Grubb, whose Seahawks ran the ball infrequently (29th in designed rush rate at 33.7%) and not all that effectively (28th at 95.7 yards per game), which put too much pressure on quarterback Geno Smith.
The low point came in overtime of a November loss to the Los Angeles Rams, when the Seahawks needed only a yard to keep a potential game-winning drive alive but were stuffed on consecutive handoffs to Kenneth Walker III. They lined up in shotgun on third-and-1 and then brought in a tight end to play fullback on fourth down.
Whereas Grubb was a lifelong college coach who heavily favored shotgun, Kubiak's Vikings and Saints offenses were near the top of the NFL in under-center snaps. Kubiak also used a true fullback in both stops, something Seattle didn't have last season.
And while the Seahawks' run game experienced a short-lived breakout in December with a gap-scheme attack, Kubiak's forte is the outside zone, which his father Gary Kubiak adopted from Mike Shanahan in the 1990s.
New Orleans ran the second-highest percentage of outside zone runs last season, and Kubiak plans to make that the focal point of Seattle's rushing attack.
"It's important to establish a way of doing business here," he said. "We're going to start with that being an outside zone, but obviously we're going to incorporate gap schemes, inside zones, pin and pull. We've got to do what our players do best. So we have a philosophy that we believe in, a style that we believe in, but you've got to be able to win more than one way, like we said."
While the Seahawks will need to upgrade the talent on their offensive line -- Kubiak dropped what may have been a hint when he said in the radio interview that the zone scheme requires an "elite" center -- their backfield will be well-stocked as long as Walker can stay healthy. He missed six games last season with oblique, calf and ankle injuries, forcing Zach Charbonnet into the leading role.
The speedy Walker had ranked eighth among running backs in rushing yards and rushing touchdowns over his first two seasons, but was held to career lows in both (573, seven) last season.
"He's a talented player so I'm really excited about him in this zone scheme," Kubiak said. "But I've seen Ken in all schemes play really good football. I've seen the guy catch the ball well out of the backfield, which I think is really important for our backs that we utilize them. Obviously, whatever we can do to get him touches ... we're going to ask a lot out of him."
A team source confirmed on Thursday that the Seahawks are expected to hire Justin Outten as run-game specialist. They're also talking with Rick Dennison, who's worked with both Kubiaks over several stops. Outten's and Dennison's fortes have been the offensive line and run game, which complements Kubiak's quarterback- and passing-centric background.
At one point on Tuesday, Kubiak made a passing reference to the run game being Seattle's offensive identity. He was then asked why that's important.
"Because if you drop back 50 times in the game, it's tough," he said. "You've have got to be a balanced team. I think balance is important and sometimes you've got to drop back 50 times to win the game and sometimes you've got to run it 50 times. But when it all comes through, we want to be balanced, and we want to be able to win multiple ways."