Brian Schottenheimer not in charge of Seahawks passing game

With free agency just a week away, and the Seattle Seahawks the recipients of three comp picks in the 2020 NFL Draft in April, the Hawks made a couple of adjustments to the offensive coaching staff Tuesday.

Breer is a reporter for NBC Sports Boston, and Boston is, of course, where former Seahawks assistant coach Steve Shimko is now the tight ends coach at Boston College. Shimko departed in January after spending the 2019 season as assistant quarterbacks coach under quarterbacks coach Dave Canales.

So, Canales has now been promoted to passing game coordinator, while Austin Davis is promoted from quarterbacks coach. An official title for Sanjay Lal, who was reported to have been added from the Dallas Cowboys earlier this offseason, has yet to be announced, and these promotions bring up an interesting question. Specifically, who has been in charge of the Seahawks passing game over the prior two seasons?

It’s known that Darell Bevell was the offensive coordinator and had passing game responsibilities from 2011 through 2017, while Tom Cable was the run game coordinator. With Canales taking on the title, and presumably responsibility of coordinating the passing game, there are three possibilities. First, either Brian Schottenheimer has been in charge of the passing game for the prior two seasons and had that responsibility taken away. The second possibility is that someone else has been in charge of the passing game and had that responsibility taken away or departed. Lastly, Canales could have been in charge of the passing game without being given the associated title.

As noted, the only coach who has departed was Shimko, whose background could indicate that he may have played a not insignificant role in helping design the passing game. Having worked under P.J. Fleck, who is currently the head coach of the Minnesota Golden Gophers, at Western Michigan, Shimko obviously has experience working in modern passing offenses. What exactly his role was in contributing to the Hawks passing game in recent seasons we obviously have no idea.

In any case, whatever the answer is, it’s not really all that important going forward. That said, it will certainly be interesting to see what the team’s passing offense looks like in 2020 compared to 2018 and 2019 in order to see what kind of changes, if any, the team deploys in terms of core concepts and methods of attack through the air.