Looking at potential offensive line coaches for Seahawks opening

In the comments to the article regarding the change in scoring production following a change in offensive coordinator, commenter Stevo’s posed a great question, so I wanted to take a moment and answer it. For those who did not see it, here is the comment in full:

This is a great question, and while Stevo’s largely answered it for himself in a comment on another post, I already had this in the works, and know that important answers like this are far more likely to get seen when they are a full post as opposed to simply a comment. Thus, here are the offensive line coaches that Brian Schottenheimer — rumored to be the next offensive coordinator of the Seattle Seahawks — has worked over the course of his NFL career.

Easiest thing to do seems to simply go down the list.

Hudson Houck

Houck is an interesting one with a resume that includes both highly successful teams and some that were highly unsuccessful. He coached for a year at the high school level before leaving for a two year stint in the Army during the Vietnam war. Upon discharge from the Army he returned to coaching at Crescenta Valley High School in La Crescenta, CA for a year before getting hired to coach for the freshman team at USC (the NCAA did not allow freshman to play football until 1972). He then bounced around as an offensive line coach for four decades.

He coached the offensive line for the 1992 Seattle Seahawks, the team that holds the record for the fewest points ever scored by an NFL team in a 16-game season, and after just a single season in Seattle went on to coach the offensive line for the Super Bowl Champion 1993 Dallas Cowboys.

Houck was a great coach who worked for several old school coaches, including Jimmy Johnson in Dallas, Marty Schottenheimer in San Diego, Nick Saban in Miami and Wade Phillips in Dallas. January marked six years since Houck retired, and at 75 years of age and six years since he last coached, it seems unlikely he will be returning to coach in the NFL anytime soon.

Carl Mauck

Mauck served as the offensive line coach for the San Diego Chargers in 2005, but retired after the Chargers finished 9-7, and it has been over twelve years since he has coached in the NFL. He spent decades in the NFL as a coach and player, but at over 70 and with more than a decade having past since his last coaching experience, I’m going to go ahead and assume Schottenheimer isn’t going to pull Mauck out of retirement.

Tony Wise

Under the direction of head coach Eric Mangini in 2006 and 2007, Tony Wise served as the offensive line coach for the New York Jets. Wise had his greatest success early in his career, as he was the offensive line coach for the Super Bowl Champion 1992 Dallas Cowboys. After moving on from the Cowboys Wise went on to coach for the Chicago Bears, Carolina Panthers and Miami Dolphins, before making his final NFL stop with the Jets in 2006 and 2007.

After two years with the Jets, Wise took a position as the offensive line coach for the Pitt Panthers under Dave Wannstedt, though it appears as though Wannstedt was fired following the 2010 season. I have been unable to locate any further information on Wise’s current employment status, however, based on the fact that he has not coached in the NFL in over a decade and is 66 years old, I’d guess he’s retired and not considered a serious candidate by the Seahawks to coach the offensive line.

Bill Callahan

Bill Callahan may be best known for two things. The first is for gloriously blowing the Super Bowl matchup between the Oakland Raiders and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with a gameplan that was the exact opposite of how the team made it to the Super Bowl and for being in charge of the Nebraska Cornhuskers football team when the wheels completely came off.

In spite of that, Callahan is easily one of the best offensive line coaches currently in the NFL. He was the offensive line coach for the Wisconsin Badgers in the early 1990s under Barry Alvarez. He built the offensive line for the Raiders under Jon Gruden that helped Oakland get to the Super Bowl. He built the offensive line for the 2008-2011 New York Jets that went to the AFC Championship game in consecutive years with Mark Sanchez at quarterback and he built the Dallas Cowboys offensive line that fans all know and envy.

He’s currently employed by Dan Snyder, reportedly as one of - if not the - highest paid assistant coach in the NFL, and the only way he gets away from Washington is likely over Dan Snyder’s dead body.

Paul Boudreau

After leaving New York, Schottenheimer took over as the offensive coordinator under Jeff Fisher for the St. Louis Rams, and there his offensive line coach was Paul Boudreau. Boudreau had a coaching career that covered four decades, including thirty seasons as an offensive line coach at the NFL level.

He coached several of the Detroit Lions offensive lines that blocked for Barry Sanders, he coached the offensive line for the New England Patriots under Pete Carroll in the late 90s and he coached the offensive lines for Jimmy Johnson for the Miami Dolphins. In three decades he coached linemen to pave the way for running backs including not just Sanders, but Curtis Martin, Thurman Thomas, Fred Taylor and Steven Jackson, but he retired following the termination of the entire Los Angeles Rams coaching staff in 2016 and spent 2017 out of the NFL.

And those are the offensive line coaches that Schottenheimer has worked with. Thus, of the five offensive line coaches he has worked with extensively during his time in the NFL, four of them are retired and the fifth is currently under contract with Washington. Now, he has worked with a couple of assistant offensive line coaches during his time as well, in Mike Devlin, Dave DeGuglielmo and Andy Dickerson.

However, Devlin is the offensive line coach for the Houston Texans under Bill O’Brien and Houston seems unlikely to allow him to leave. Dickerson remains an assistant offensive line coach for the Rams, a position he has now held for six seasons, and there is no indication that will change moving forward. Dave DeGuglielmo is the offensive line coach who took over for two seasons in New England when Dante Scarnecchia retired, and was blasted by the media for letting Tom Brady get hit 21 times in the 2015 AFC Championship game against the Denver Broncos. DeGuglielmo is currently under contract to the Dolphins, but the team is allowing him to interview for the same position with other teams this offseason. Thus, he is available, but it seems as though Hawks fans would revolt if he were hired into the position.

So, while Schottenheimer certainly brings great name recognition and has worked with tons of coaches during his time in the coaching sphere, the majority of the offensive line coaches with which he has worked are retired, and none of the assistant offensive line coaches he has worked with are highly attractive.

In short, looking at the coaches Schottenheimer has worked with in the past does not seem to shed any light on who the Seahawks might hire to be their next offensive line coach.