Brian

Fleury

Per Fowler, Seahawks tight ends are “going to be moving all around” the formation this season. Whether Darnold targets TEs AJ Barner and Elijah Arroyo more often remains to be seen, but we can take this as a net positive for the offense overall. Shifts and motion give the defense an extra item to monitor. Motion added 0.25 yards per play to the NFL average last year. The 49ers averaged the fourth-highest shifts and motion rate (74.3 percent) in the 2025 regular season, while Fleury served as their run game coordinator and tight ends coach. The Seahawks’ 67.4 percent rate ranked 12th. Fleury will call plays offensively for the first time in his career, and former OC Klint Kubiak will not be easy to replace. This is an encouraging report for the Seahawks’ fantasy-scoring prospects, though.

Fleury’s theoretical ability to run a similar offensive system is ostensibly one reason that the Seahawks hired him. Fleury served as the 49ers’ run game coordinator and tight ends coach last season. Former Seahawks OC and new Raiders head coach Klint Kubiak served as the 49ers’ pass game coordinator in 2023. We can expect to see the Seahawks again feature shifts, motion and play action. Although Fleury has called plays defensively and for special teams, he has never done so offensively. He will do so this season, and he told reporters that he has already begun preparing to execute that assignment.

This has the feel of a heat-check hire for the Seahawks, who bring on someone who has never called offensive plays before and only has a single season as a run game coordinator with San Francisco in 2025. The process didn’t exactly yield a ton of “easy” candidates — it was a down year for offensive coaches and many of them had been picked over while Seattle was busy winning a championship. Still, we have very little that says Fleury is qualified for this job from the outside beyond “was a close Kyle Shanahan personal circle friend.” Despite winning Super Bowl LX, the Seahawks’ run game struggled at times last season. Fleury’s hiring may bode positively for the run game’s outlook in 2026. ESPN’s Brady Henderson previously reported that the Seahawks’ new offensive coordinator will call plays this season.

Fleury has an interesting background, having held diverse coaching and operational roles after playing quarterback in college. Fleury coached at Maryland, Sacred Heart and Towson from 2003-2012, serving as a graduate assistant, secondary coach, outside linebackers coach, defensive coordinator and special teams coordinator. He entered the NFL coaching ranks with the Bills in 2013, serving as a quality control coach. The Browns then employed him as an assistant linebackers coach (2014) and outside linebackers coach (2015), where he notably coached alongside 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan. Fleury signed on with the Dolphins as a football research analyst in 2016 before being promoted to director of football research in 2017. He became the 49ers’ defensive quality control coach in 2019 before switching to the offensive side of the ball in 2020. He has since served as the 49ers’ offensive quality control coach, tight ends coach and run game coordinator.