Report: Seahawks hire from within NFC West, land Rams’ Shane Waldron as offensive coordinator – Field Gulls

To quote the late Jimi Jamison from the rock group Survivor, the search is over.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter dropped a Friday news dump on a Tuesday evening, and it has to do with the Seattle Seahawks’ offensive coordinator position. After a couple of weeks of speculation, excitement, dread, indifference, and that worrying moment when Adam Gase’s name appeared, the Seahawks are reportedly hiring Los Angeles Rams passing game coordinator Shane Waldron to replace Brian Schottenheimer.

Waldron has been with Sean McVay since their days in Washington back in 2016. When McVay was hired by the Rams, Waldron was initially Los Angeles’ tight ends coach before assuming the role of the passing game coordinator in 2018. He also had the title of quarterbacks coach in 2019 before focusing just on the passing game again in 2020. Previously he was an intern with the New England Patriots and worked under Bill Belichick as an offensive quality control coach and then later the tight ends coach in 2009.

The 41-year-old native of Portland, Oregon has never called plays in the NFL, but I assume as offensive coordinator he was calling plays at the prestigious K-12 Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in Massachusetts back in 2011.

We know that while the Los Angeles Rams have been a pass-heavy team on early downs in neutral game script situations under Sean McVay, they are big on play-action and they have led the league in play-action attempts over the past two seasons. Rather curiously, the Seahawks only had 9 more play-action passes in 2020 than in 2019 despite increasing Russell Wilson’s pass attempts by 42.

The play-action rate is one thing, but the creativity of the play-action concepts and moving Jared Goff out of the pocket is a different story and the Rams have consistently made that a staple of their offense throughout the McVay era.

And so in steps Mr. Waldron as the Seahawks’ fourth OC in the Pete Carroll era. Congratulations to him and hopefully this is a great hire.