RENTON — Brian Schottenheimer had just given the next play to the quarterback. But the Seattle Seahawks’ new play-caller wasn’t content to just let the snap play out from there.
It already seems like Schottenheimer, the biggest move in Pete Carroll’s massive overhaul of Seattle’s coaching staff this offseason, isn’t content with much of anything.
The team’s new offensive coordinator walked down the line of undrafted free-agent wide receivers behind the huddle, where he had just given seventh-round pick Alex McGough the play. Schottenheimer then noticed tryout receiver Ross Scheuerman lined up in the slot on the left side of the formation.
Schottenheimer ran up to the 25-year-old receiver from Lafayette before the snap, grabbed him around the waist and pulled him two steps to the right. The adjustment may have been a foot, foot-and-a-half, tops. In a no-pads, rookie-minicamp practice. In May. And with a player unlikely to make even training camp, let alone the team.
Yet the moment exemplified what quarterback Russell Wilson and the Seahawks’ offense can expect this year.
Already conspicuous in a scruffy beard, a Seahawks visor pulled low over his brow and play cards in both his hand and waistband of his team sweatpants, Schottenheimer was holding rookie quarterback McGough accountable Saturday. Immediately after some running plays in during a team scrimmage, Schottenheimer pulled McGough aside and stepped the rookie through the footwork he wants on hand-offs.
Schottenheimer’s been doing this for 17 years as an assistant with quarterbacks and offenses in the NFL. He’s a football lifer, the son of longtime NFL coach Marty Schottenheimer. Brian has stressed fundamentals with some of the better quarterbacks in the league, ones with a far more household name than McGough.
“Great guy, but even better coach,” said McGough, the rookie from Florida International and only the second quarterback coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider have selected in nine drafts leading Seattle. “He has coached Drew Brees at the start of his career, Philip Rivers at the start of his career, Andrew Luck. There are a lot of good quarterbacks that have come from under him.
“I am very excited to get to work with him.”
Later in Saturday’s practice, Schottenheimer gave quarterback Troy Williams, one of 46 players here on a tryout basis this weekend, another of Seattle’s lengthy play calls. The former University of Washington and Utah quarterback walked in the huddle and appeared to be having problems getting all the words of the call out correctly. Schottenheimer stepped into the huddle, stood shoulder to shoulder with Williams, and helped him with the verbiage.
“Brian is very active on the field,” Carroll said, almost in deadpan.
“And because he’s involved in the quarterbacks, he’s very much in tune with everything that’s going on and right in the center of the action, which is good. It’s exciting to see that.”
It’s exactly what Carroll wanted to see in his coaching changes.
Through two days of this rookie minicamp that followed a week of on-the-field workouts with the veterans in the team’s offseason training program, the difference between Schottenheimer and predecessor Darrell Bevell is noticeable.
Bevell, the offense’s coordinator from 2011 until January, was more studious and quiet in manner and demeanor on the practice field. Bevell chose to coach between plays, and mostly in measured conversations. He was more of a coordinator in the true sense of the word, overseeing the offense. The particulars and fundamentals of quarterbacking was primarily the job of quarterbacks coach Carl Smith, though Bevell obviously had some say in those, too.
That was by Carroll’s unique design. Bevell was the offensive coordinator in title, but in practice he shared game-planning and even some play calling with offensive line coach Tom Cable, who doubled as the run-game coordinator. Smith was the third assistant that coached and planned with Wilson and the quarterbacks.
Now, Schottenheimer is one man where Seattle used to have three. The former University of Florida quarterback is essentially the quarterbacks coach. Yes, Dave Canales moved from wide receivers coach into the title of quarterback coach this offseason, but Schottenheimer is the man.
Smith, who had been the quarterbacks coach since 2011, has moved to a reduced role officially titled associate head coach.
By all appearances so far, Schotteheimer will call all of the offense’s plays, the passes and the runs. New offensive line coach Mike Solari will be just that, a veteran line coach. Wilson will have a more consistent and streamlined message and messenger this year, from the mechanics of quarterbacking through the plays he’s running, than he got in the Seahawks’ unusually compartmentalized coaching arrangement of the last seven seasons, when they often had the largest staff in the league.
Carroll, 66, is already feeling the difference of having Schottenheimer and Solari both new as his most prominent assistants on offense. Friday, early in the first practice of rookie minicamp, the assistants didn’t do a drill as the veteran head man prefers. Carroll later joked how Solari, a veteran of 31 seasons as an NFL assistant, must have “to get 35 years of experience before you can really get it all right” on drills.
“Yeah, there’s a newness there. I catch myself scrambling around with some reminders on things that just come up in the structure of practice — how we handle when a guy fumbles or we jump offsides — little things like that,” Carroll said. “You try to cover everything, but then still things pop up, so there is still newness.
“But it brings a freshness and an excitement and energy about it that we’re fortunate to be in the middle of.”
It’s exactly why Carroll made the changes to begin with.
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