After a 2024 season where the Seattle Seahawks’ run game was largely stuck in neutral, head coach Mike Macdonald wasted no time making changes. Offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb was shown the door, and several members of the offensive staff followed him out, including offensive line coach Scott Huff. The message was clear: Seattle was ready to hit the reset button on its ground game.
To replace them, the Seahawks turned to a group of coaches with deep roots in run-first football. Klint Kubiak took over as offensive coordinator, and the team brought in John Benton to coach the offensive line and Rick Dennison as run game coordinator. If those names sound familiar, they should - both have long histories with wide zone schemes that trace back to the Mike Shanahan-Gary Kubiak coaching tree.
Benton’s résumé includes a lengthy tenure with the Houston Texans during Gary Kubiak’s head coaching stint, and four seasons with the San Francisco 49ers. In both places, he helped build offensive lines that thrived in the wide zone system - a scheme that demands precision, athleticism, and cohesion up front.
Dennison, meanwhile, is a veteran of the same system. He took over as offensive line coach in Denver when Alex Gibbs left for Atlanta, then followed Kubiak to Houston and returned to Denver for the Broncos’ Super Bowl run in 2015. Together, Benton and Dennison bring decades of experience teaching and executing zone-based rushing attacks - especially the outside zone - and that pedigree had Seahawks fans hoping for a major turnaround in the ground game heading into 2025.
But here we are, closing in on the end of the season, and that resurgence hasn’t materialized.
So what’s holding the Seahawks’ run game back? Is it the inexperience of the offensive line?
The scheme? The backs?
The answer, as is often the case in football, is that it’s complicated - and it’s not just one thing. But before diving into a deeper breakdown of those factors, it helps to establish a baseline: how this coaching staff has historically approached the run game, and how that compares to what we’re seeing in Seattle right now.
Let’s start by looking at Klint Kubiak’s two previous stops as an offensive coordinator - the 2021 Minnesota Vikings and the 2024 New Orleans Saints - and how often his teams leaned on zone blocking versus gap (or man) schemes.
2021 Minnesota Vikings (Zone vs. Gap Runs):
- Dalvin Cook: 175 zone / 59 gap (74.8% zone)
- Alexander Mattison: 105 zone / 27 gap (79.5%)
- Wayne Gallman: 25 zone / 3 gap (89.3%)
- Kene Nwangwu: 7 zone / 1 gap (87.5%)
- Total: 312 zone / 90 gap (77.6% zone)
2024 New Orleans Saints (Zone vs. Gap Runs):
- Alvin Kamara: 167 zone / 47 gap (78.0%)
- Jamaal Williams: 31 zone / 14 gap (68.9%)
- Kendre Miller: 28 zone / 9 gap (75.7%)
- Jordan Mims: 9 zone / 10 gap (47.4%)
- Clyde Edwards-Helaire: 10 zone / 3 gap (76.9%)
- Total: 245 zone / 83 gap (74.7% zone)
The trend is consistent - in both Minnesota and New Orleans, zone blocking was the bread and butter. Most of the backs operated in zone-heavy schemes, with seven of nine runners seeing zone percentages north of 74.8%.
Now let’s compare that to what’s happening in Seattle through 16 weeks of the 2025 season:
2025 Seattle Seahawks (Zone vs. Gap Runs):
- Kenneth Walker: 105 zone / 78 gap (57.4%)
- Zach Charbonnet: 93 zone / 51 gap (64.6%)
- George Holani: 17 zone / 5 gap (77.3%)
- Jacardia Wright: 4 zone / 1 gap (80.0%)
- Cam Akers: 1 zone / 4 gap (20.0%)
- Velus Jones: 1 zone / 3 gap (25.0%)
- Myles Gaskin: 2 zone / 1 gap (66.7%)
- Total: 223 zone / 143 gap (60.9% zone)
That’s a significant drop-off. The overall zone percentage is more than 15 points lower than what Kubiak’s offenses typically ran in Minnesota and New Orleans. And the two lead backs, Walker and Charbonnet, are both well below the historical average - particularly Walker, whose 57.4% zone usage is the second-lowest among any back with at least 10 carries, trailing only Jordan Mims from the 2024 Saints.
So what gives?
Looking at the week-by-week breakdown, it’s clear that Charbonnet was used in more zone concepts early in the season, while Walker was consistently mixed into more gap schemes. Around Week 6, things started to shift - Charbonnet’s usage in zone looks dropped, aligning more with Walker’s distribution.
That raises a few key questions. Why did the Seahawks pivot midseason? And more specifically, why is Kenneth Walker - a back with elite burst and open-field ability - being used so differently from almost every other running back in this system?
It’s not the first time this coaching staff has gone off script. In 2024, Jordan Mims was the outlier in New Orleans, with more gap runs than zone - a clear departure from the trend. Now, Walker is the anomaly in Seattle.
Is this by design? Are the coaches tailoring the scheme to fit Walker’s strengths - or perceived weaknesses?
Or is it a response to what the offensive line can handle? These are the kinds of questions that don’t have easy answers, but they’re essential to understanding why the Seahawks’ run game hasn’t taken off the way many expected.
One thing is certain: the staff in Seattle has a long and proven track record of building successful zone-based rushing attacks. The departure from that identity - especially when it comes to Walker’s usage - is notable, and it’s something that deserves a closer look in the coming weeks.
For now, the focus shifts to Week 17 and a matchup with the Carolina Panthers. But don’t be surprised if this run game discussion continues to simmer - because the numbers are telling a story that goes deeper than just yards per carry.