The Seattle Seahawks missed the playoffs in the 2024 season despite going 10-7 in Mike MacDonald's first season as head coach, with a mediocre performance on offense a key reason why their campaign did not stretch into the postseason.
Seattle, having finished 18th in Expected Points Added per play and 15th in success rate on offense, subsequently fired Ryan Grubb after just one season as its coordinator, and the Seahawks introduced his replacement on Tuesday after tasking Klint Kubiak with getting the most out of an extremely talented group.
Kubiak comes over after one season as the New Orleans Saints offensive coordinator, a campaign that started promisingly but saw head coach Dennis Allen fired after Week 9, with injuries contributing to a sharp decline after a 2-0 start.
The former San Francisco 49ers passing game specialist did not get the chance to coach a full season with Derek Carr, who played only 10 games. Kubiak, though, is now excitedly looking to the future in Seattle, where he will be joined by Andrew Janocko, the Seahawks' new quarterbacks coach who has also come over from New Orleans.
And he is relishing the prospect of working with his new quarterback, Geno Smith.
While the Seattle offense was uninspiring overall in 2024, Smith finished fourth among qualifying quarterbacks in completion percentage over expectation (CPOE), illustrating the need for the Seahawks signal-caller to receive more support.
That is something Kubiak is determined to give him.
"I have a lot of respect for Geno," Kubiak said at an introductory press conference alongside MacDonald.
"[He] was a huge draw to come here and be able to get to coach him alongside Andrew Janocko. So, we have high expectations for him. We're going to push Geno and get the best out of him, and we'll do that by pushing his teammates as well.
"It's not just his show, it's a team thing, and he's got to be the head of that."
Explaining why he is so excited to work with Smith, Kubiak added: "I think Geno's tough as nails. I think you look at the guy in the fourth quarter and he goes and wins football games. So that excites me. That fires me up.
"I've watched his career, studying him more now than I ever have before. But you think about a guy that's been through a lot of adversity, the guy that's been knocked off the high horse and had to claw his way back into the starter's role and then he comes back the last two years and wins more games in the fourth quarter than anybody in the NFL. That's a guy that I want to coach."
