Maybe not since the Seattle Seahawks hired Chuck Knox in 1983 has the team appeared to be trying harder to look like the Rams as they do in 2025. Although the Seahawks have recently tried stealing pieces from Sean McVay to fix the offense, this time Seattle thinks the moves will actually work. In their most recent preseason game, a 33-16 win over the Chiefs, the Seahawks put up 477 total yards of offense, including 268 on the ground.
It was only a meaningless preseason game. But will a “McVay-like offense” in Seattle carry into the regular season and challenge the Rams for the NFC West division?
The Seahawks “McVay” pieces in 2025
First the team hired Klint Kubiak to be the new offensive coordinator in January after firing a one-year experiment with college coach Ryan Grubb. Although Kubiak never directly worked for or with McVay, the roots are basically the same: Mike Shanahan.
Kubiak’s dad Gary was the offensive coordinator for Shanahan’s Broncos, many years before McVay was hired by Mike Shanahan in Washington. McVay and Kyle Shanahan are two peas in a pod and Klint Kubiak is basically one seedling over; Kubiak was passing game coordinator for Shanahan on the 49ers in 2023.
The evidence of a McVay-esque offense in Seattle are explained in this breakdown by All-22 Films:
The Seahawks also signed Cooper Kupp in free agency after he was released by the Rams, setting up a spot for him in Kubiak’s offense as a complementary weapon for Jaxon Smith-Njigba in Week 1. No active player in football who isn’t on the Rams right now will better understand the intentions of a McVay offense than Kupp will.
Seattle’s passing game coordinator Jake Peetz was an assistant and pass game specialist in L.A. under McVay from 2022-2023. He was also an assistant under McVay in 2014.
And though they’ve never worked with McVay, several other new Seahawks assistant coaches will understand the intentions of the offense as well:
- QB coach Andrew Janocko is a Kubiak guy
- OL coach John Benton was with Shanahan from 2017-2020 (and is a former Rams assistant)
- Run Game specialist Justin Outten coached under Matt LaFleur in Green Bay
- Veteran advisor Rick Dennison is a longtime Kubiak/Shanahan coach
None of which is meant to imply that the Seahawks have nailed their hires and will challenge McVay’s offensive accomplishments. It just means that they’re really, really trying to.
Sam Darnold knows the system too
Although many people questioned why the Seahawks would trade Geno Smith to the Raiders, one thing we know for sure is that Smith is not a Kubiak, Shanahan, or McVay quarterback. Maybe he could have picked it up quickly and excelled in it, but we’ll never find out because Seattle decided to make a change at quarterback after hiring Kubiak and overhauling the offensive staff with Shanahan-y assistants.
For better or worse, Darnold does have experience with it.
After disastrous stints with the Jets and Panthers, Darnold spent the 2023 season on the sidelines in San Francisco, studying the Shanahan playbook. He parlayed the high regard that coaches had for him at the time into a “bridge QB” audition with the Vikings in 2024, where he was paired up with former McVay offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell. I probably don’t need to tell any of you that Darnold had a career-best season, throwing 35 touchdowns and helping the Vikings win 14 games prior to a team meltdown in the final two games.
Darnold may never be that good again. Maybe he’s so bad that the Seahawks turn to Jalen Milroe midseason and cut Darnold in 2026. Anything is possible.
That’s not the point being made here, which is that Seattle went after a quarterback who has familiarity with Shanahan and the McVay tree, linking him perfectly with Kubiak and looping back to the intention of a zone blocking run scheme, play action passes, condensed formations, and plenty of pre-snap motions. Darnold had less of a learning curve with that stuff than the quarterback he is replacing in Seattle, just another sign that the Seahawks really want to be able to trade blows with a McVay offense.
And so they went to the source. Unlike the decision to hire Shane Waldron a few years ago, this time it could work.
Long time before we see Rams-Seahawks
The two teams will not meet until Week 11, a November showdown at SoFi Stadium, meaning that the faceoff doesn’t happen for another three months. A lot could happen between now and then. We can’t be sure who the quarterbacks will be for either team, but we can be sure that both teams will be running a similar offense to one another.
McVay’s has had great success in the past, although the Rams were 31st in the NFL in yards per carry last year and will be looking to improve that number in 2025. Just two years ago, they were 12th. Two years before that, the Rams won the Super Bowl. We know that McVay can make it work in L.A., but can other teams make it work just as good with similar styles, but no McVay?
