Two and a half years ago, Bill O’Brien decided to head back to the NFL, and Nick Saban was suddenly in search of a new offensive coordinator. The Tide had averaged north of 40 points per game and was in the top 6 in the country in scoring every single year from 2018-2022, and the expectation was to find someone new to keep that streak going.
At the time, the name Ryan Grubb surfaced as a leading candidate for the Tide. Most fans were extremely excited about him and the dynamic passing offenses he had structured at Washington and Fresno State. It would have been a sharp schematic difference for Saban, but the upside and track record were there. However, Grubb turned down the job to stay at UW with Coach Kalen DeBoer and QB Michael Penix, Jr. It wound up being the right call, as they made it to the National Championship.
At the same time, Saban hired Tommy Rees (Much to RBR’s chagrin) to usher his final season in a flurry of mostly failed attempts to rush the ball, ending with the Tide’s lowest scoring output since 2009.
Then Saban retired, Alabama hired DeBoer, and Grubb came with him. After being the “one that got away” in 2023, Grubb was now seen as the biggest positive of the DeBoer hire. The problem was… That lasted all of 3 weeks before Grubb took a promotion up to the NFL to coordinate the Seattle Seahawks. Again, you can’t blame him — not only do you not turn down your first shot at the NFL, it’s really hard to not take a major promotion when you also don’t have to move houses.
In the process, though, he upgraded in the eyes of Alabama fans from “one that got away” to “Great White Buffalo”.
The program and Grubb again went their separate ways, and this time it didn’t work out so well for either party. Alabama’s offense under the hastily promoted Nick Sheridan was equivalent at best to the one the year before under Rees, and Grubb was fired after one season in Seattle.
While the Seahawks did set some franchise and career records in passing yards, the offense overall was a below average scoring unit, and it was trending worse as the season went on. The long and the short of it was that the new head coach wanted to run the ball, Grubb couldn’t do it, and things spiraled from there.
Tied for second-last in the league, the Seahawks ran the ball 16 times against the Green Bay Packers and 15 times against the Minnesota Vikings before finally mustering 25 attempts against the Chicago Bears. In the two losses, five of those carries were not even from running backs.
But is it really as askew as all that? No, it’s actually far worse.
While there were a lot of food flashes in Seattle, it wasn’t cohesive, and worst of all, it was predictable. And predictability loses NFL games.
To go a little deeper into Grubb’s year in the pros, I talked to prominent Seahawks Twitter personality/podcaster/ball-knower, Griff Sturgeon (@cmikesspinmove). Sit back and enjoy!
There’s a lot that went wrong with Ryan Grubb’s one year in the NFL. Watching his offense in Washington push the ball downfield all game and have success in the run game with a lot of counter plays and gun runs was awesome to see, but in the NFL, it seemed to go very stale, very quickly. Do you think that this was purely a function of a scheme not being able to function in the NFL, or was it just a first-time OC getting called out on predictable tendencies by NFL-level defenses?
Grubb’s transition to the NFL and subsequent failure can be characterized as a deficiency of strategy, not so much tactical. The creative designs and wrinkles to break open coverage shells seen by all at Washington were still present in his one-year stint in Seattle, but they were not woven effectively into a coherent overall offensive structure. This ultimately undermined his tactical creativity, and the offense saw diminishing returns as soon as the week six mark or so outside of sporadic bursts of Never Say Die last ditch efforts in subsequent weeks.
The structural failure can be sourced to the transition from an offense that spent ~90% of its snaps in shotgun afforded by the college game to having to find a more balanced split due to NFL realities and the value in a viable under center game found therein.
Building more out of under center caused two distinct issues:
1. Grubb and OL coach Scott Huff simply were not good at installing and coaching an under center run game and all of the accompanying play-action protection schemes and,
2. the run:pass ratios in under center being lopsided in favor of the run indirectly demands the pass rate in shotgun also increase to offset so the overall pass rate does not dip to analytically ill-advised levels.
This increase in shotgun pass rate (~80%, exceeding 2023 UW’s shotgun pass rate of roughly 60%) decreased the play action attempts as the gun run game became less prevalent and also made the same shotgun play action concepts that Grubb used to great effect at UW less successful.
While the run game was a disaster and the play action passing was a huge problem, there were some areas of Grubb’s offense that showed a lot of promise – such as the red zone passing. What are one or two things from Grubb’s scheme/playcalling that can be a big bonus to Alabama as he moves back to college ball?
Grubb’s tactical designs and ability to sequence in wrinkles/layers to said designs are still superb. Spending more time in shotgun again will allow him to live in his structural wheelhouse so his creativity can be fully tapped. Ultimately, he is a match-up hunter–he finds and creates the mismatches formationally and schematically and flows his offenses through the strengths of his best players.
Specifically, in the pass game, he does a great job of preying on the base assumption of defenders given the technique they are playing within a certain coverage and using it against them. Against aggressive downhill quarter safeties, the dig-and-go will feature a lot. 2nd level option routes are at the center of his offense’s ability to crack coverage shells with regular ease.
While rushing was mostly was ineffective in Seattle, could you make any heads or tails on how the run game was supposed to work and fit in Grubb’s offense?
In the run game, his gun run game can be best summarized as a constraint and complement to the pass game, keeping the defensive lineman’s keying honest as well as the defensive coordinator by building the run game out of front beaters. Instead of having a core run regardless of the front, Grubb will hammer the bubble(s) and will use different gap scheme or zone adjustments week to week in accordance with the fronts and alignments he will see from that week’s defense. It’s multiple and malleable at its best.
What type of QB would be the ideal scheme fit for this offense? (Not that I’m asking because Alabama has three QBs with different skillsets with no starter yet, or anything)
I think the traits required to pass the litmus test that Grubb and Deboer will impose on their QB room will start with having a cannon for an arm and the boldness to try tight downfield windows to match as well being firm in the pocket with a tendency to checkdown instead of bailing the pocket at the sign of inoperable pressure. The deep ball and getting rid of the ball instead of unnecessary scrambling or taking sacks I think are the non-negotiables. Everything else can be case by case.
Any other overall thoughts about Grubb that you didn’t get to in the other questions?
He’s a very bright offensive mind and good coach that needs to be in the right situation for his qualities to show. Being back with Deboer and having SEC money and recruiting infrastructure at his disposal, to me, signals great things for Bama.
A year ago, I wrote this article after studying DeBoer and Grubb’s offense at Washington:
We knew going in that the run game would be a constraint to the pass game as the 2nd level passing picked up the bulk of the offense’s heavy lifting.
With Grubb and DeBoer separating for a year, the scheme manifested differently at the two programs, but the bones were the same.
In Seattle, the offensive line was unable to block for shotgun runs, and when the head coach wanted to go under center, Grubb was unable to mesh it with the whole game plan and became to predictable with his formations.
At Alabama, the Tide was similarly unable to run well from shotgun, but rather than substituting those runs for dropbacks, they used QB runs instead. Still, it became predictable, and though Jalen Milroe’s mid-level completion percentage improved by almost 15% from the prior year, the offense became too situationally predictable.
Going into 2025, we know that Grubb has the ability to orchestrate a dynamic downfield passing game. There will be two major questions: can he also create a functional run game as a constraint where Nick Sheridan could not, and does he have the QB to push the ball downfield?
The first of those can be manufactured, and a year of scheme/OL coach continuity should help a lot there. The second? Who knows. Can Ty Simpson be a big-armed guy that doesn’t scramble too much? He seems more like an improvisor and a “West Coast” scheme short distance passer. But do we trust that Austin Mack or Keelon Russell can come in and be the guy as young players?
As always, things come down to the QB. And so goes the sport of football.
