New Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator Brian Fleury said his offense would be like the one that just won a Super Bowl.
“I would say both of us were more influenced by [49ers head coach] Kyle [Shanahan] than anything else,” Fleury said of his commonalities with Kubiak.
“Klint’s a good friend and a great football coach. And right away we bonded over similar views of football and how we see the game, what we think is important.”
Fleury was asked what his offense would look like.
“It looks very similar to the one that just won the Super Bowl,” he said.
“It’s more about how you play than what you actually are doing schematically. We’re going to be fast and violent and aggressive in every way that we possibly can, put pressure on defenses both schematically and from a tempo standpoint, and just always have that type of mindset.”
Fleury said that he had already started studying Kubiak’s scheme and praised him for putting his players in a position to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. He also credited general manager John Schneider and head coach Mike Macdonald for building a talented roster.
“There’s a lot of talent,” he said. “There’s not many things to fix, quite honestly. They already play a way that’s visible on the silent tape. You can see the culture on the film, so I’m excited to just work with that and continue to build it.”
He said he would try to keep as much of the offense as possible, while also drawing on concepts he used under Shanahan.
After starting his career as a graduate assistant at the University of Maryland, he coached defensive backs and served as defensive coordinator at Sacred Heart University, then special teams coordinator and DBs coach at Towson.
He served as a quality control coach for the Buffalo Bills, then coached linebackers for the Cleveland Browns. He spent several years away from coaching in the Miami Dolphins’ analytics and research department before returning to coaching as a defensive quality control coach with the 49ers, then flipping to the same position on offense.
He was then promoted to tight ends coach, then took on the run game coordinator position, before being hired as OC for the Seahawks this year.
Besides gaining familiarity with many of the defensive coordinators he will face off against this season, Fleury said his experience working in a variety of different defensive styles makes it easier to understand how they operate, which in turn gives him a basis for how to attack them.
He also talked about how his time away from the coaching game broadened his perspective. Instead of teaching the game to players, he spent his time in Miami studying offensive trends and philosophies across the league, which helped him develop his own offensive philosophy.
“At the time, I was a little bit frustrated because I wasn’t dealing with players directly,” he recounted.
“But in hindsight, it probably was one of the most valuable three-year periods of my life, just from a development standpoint.”
