Seattle Seahawks' offense 'a symphony of destruction'

Even with all the usual caveats of preseason football, the Seattle Seahawks’ new-look offense has made quite the first impression.

‘Our style of football’: A glowing start for Seahawks’ new-look offense

Playing together for the first time this preseason, Seattle’s first-team unit executed new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak’s scheme to perfection in Friday night’s preseason game against the Kansas City Chiefs, churning out an exceptionally sharp 10-play, 81-yard touchdown drive on the opening series.

Zach Charbonnet took advantage of ample space and wide running lanes, rushing five times for 45 yards and a touchdown on that opening march. Sam Darnold completed all four of his passes for 34 yards, including a pair of play-action bootlegs where fullback Robbie Ouzts and tight end Elijah Arroyo were schemed wide-open.

That flawless cameo for the first-team offense set the tone for the entirely night, with the Seahawks piling up 477 total yards in a dominant 33-16 win. Seattle finished with 268 rushing yards and 5.6 yards per carry, along with 209 passing yards on a highly efficient 81% completion rate.

Former NFL quarterback Brock Huard perhaps summed it up best during Monday’s edition of Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk.

“It was a symphony of destruction,” Huard said.

“There’s an old saying that the film’s never as good as you think it is and it’s never as bad as you think it is,” Huard added. “But that film was as good as you thought it was. Those numbers bear that out.”

.@Seahawks offense looked flawless with Sam Darnold under center in their opening drive 👏

Watch on @NFLNetwork
Stream on @NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/v33lfq3z1o

— NFL (@NFL) August 16, 2025

‘Something that we’ve just not seen’

The Seahawks, who also rushed for 170 yards and 5.3 yards per carry in their preseason opener against the Las Vegas Raiders, are averaging an NFL-leading 219 rushing yards per game and an NFL-best 5.5 yards per carry through the first two weeks of the preseason. The next-closest teams in those categories are averaging 162.5 rushing yards per game and 4.8 yards per carry.

Again, it’s the preseason. But it’s obvious just how much cleaner and efficient the Seahawks’ offense looks from previous years – especially compared to last season’s unit, which had one of worst rushing attacks in the league and was frequently behind the sticks in third-and-long situations.

As Huard pointed out, Seattle is plenty familiar with how effective the Shanahan-style offense can be, having gone up against Kyle Shanahan’s San Francisco 49ers and Sean McVay’s Los Angeles Rams for years.

Now, the Seahawks could be poised to reap the benefits of that system under Kubiak – who is closely tied to the Shanahan coaching tree.

“We have seen the Niners do that,” Huard said. “We’ve seen the Rams do it. We have seen this Shanahan tree be able to build some of these branches like that. It’s the first time we’ve seen it executed in that kind of fashion in any kind of preseason game, any regular-season, any postseason game here for the Seattle Seahawks. So you can put an asterisk by it all you want, … but what they did (on Friday) is something that we’ve just not seen.

“At one point midway through the third quarter, they had 11 rushing first downs and 11 passing first downs too. So it wasn’t just run to run. It was run to set up all of that beautiful play-action pass and all the efficiency that came off of it. It was about as good as you can play offense against a team that we were told was pretty deep defensively. And they just shredded them.”

‘This was the hope’

Huard said the first two preseason games have shown the value of experience and familiarity on the Seahawks’ new offensive coaching staff. That group is headlined by Kubiak, but it also includes new offensive line coach John Benton and run game coordinator/senior offensive advisor Rick Dennison. Benton and Dennison are both longtime NFL assistants who are well-versed in the Shanahan system.

“This was the hope when you hired the kind of brain trust, the years of experience, the time on task that all of these men have had together in their football lives,” Huard said. “You weren’t bringing in this guy from this system, and that guy from that system, and this guy from this experience. You were bringing (coaches that have) made a living burying their roots in the Shanahan tree.

“This was the hope and the expectation. … And preseason or not, dress rehearsal or not, that act was well done from beginning to end.”

Listen to the full Brock and Salk conversation at this link or in the audio player near the bottom of this story. Tune into Brock and Salk weekdays from 6 to 10 a.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.

Seattle Seahawks’ offense ‘a symphony of destruction’

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