The Titans are looking at a candidate from the Seahawks for their General Manager vacancy.
Per Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports, Tennessee has requested an interview with Seattle senior director of player personnel Matt Berry.
Berry just completed his 17th season with the Seahawks and his second as a senior director. He is previous position with the club was director of college scouting, serving in the role from 2015-2022.
The Titans have stated that they’d like someone with a heavy scouting background to be their next G.M. and Berry appears to fit that mold.
The club fired Ran Carthon on Jan. 7 after just two years with the team.
Quarterback Geno Smith has completed his third season as the starting quarterback in Seattle. Head coach Mike Macdonald hopes there will be at least a fourth.
“I want Geno to be here,” Macdonald told reporters on Monday. “I think he’s a heck of a player. The first thing it always comes back to is what’s best for the team. I feel like Geno is the best for the team right now. I’ll be involved with it, ultimately it’s not my decision. It’s a Seahawks decision. But, Geno knows how we feel about him and we love him as our starting quarterback for sure.”
The decision ultimately will be made by G.M. John Schneider, who emerged with final say over the roster last year, following the departure of coach Pete Carroll.
Smith signed a three-year, $75 million contract after the 2022 season. The deal was structured to give the team the ability to tear it up after each of the first two seasons. He now enters the final year of his contract, with a $16 million roster bonus due on March 16, and a $14.8 million base salary. A $200,000 workout bonus pushes the total package to $31 million.
The quick deadline forces the Seahawks to decide sooner than later whether to activate the third year. The bigger question is whether he’ll get an extension and a raise.
Smith wanted a new deal after the 2023 season, but it didn’t happen.
Regardless, Macdonald’s position on his quarterback is clear. He wants Smith back.
“We did a lot of really good things and one of those things is Geno’s productivity, and this is something that I’m looking forward to building off of,” Macdonald said. “I thought he had a really good year, we had a conversation yesterday, and the feeling you get was he’s proud of the things we did, but felt like we could have done a better job as an offense and as a team and could have put ourselves in a position going to the tournament to go make a run at this thing.”
One factor will be the new offensive coordinator. Will they hire someone who will be prepared to get the most out of Smith, or will the new offensive coach have a system to which Smith will have to adapt?
“Anytime you’re bringing anybody in coaching-wise, you want to understand what their vision is based off the players that we have and how they would kind of deploy everything,” Macdonald said. “That’s going to be definitely a topic of conversation.”
Smith, 34, has made it clear that he has more than a few years left. The Seahawks could squat on the final year of the contract and make a decision in 2026, or they could give him security beyond 2025 with a long-term deal.
The challenge will be pegging the right value. The top of the market has reached $60 million. Where does Smith land on that scale?
In 2024, Smith threw for 4,320 yards (good for fourth in the league) and 21 touchdowns. He had 15 interceptions and a passer rating of 93.2.
For any team that is evaluating whether to keep its current quarterback, there’s a very important question to ask. If we move on, who will replace him?
Thirteen days after a Santa Splash! report that Pete Carroll is interested in the Bears, the Bears are interested in Carroll.
According to ESPN.com, the Bears will interview Carroll on Thursday.
Carroll, 73, coached the Jets, Patriots, and Seahawks. He worked in Seattle for 14 years, winning one Super Bowl and going to another one.
Surprisingly pushed out by the Seahawks a year ago, Carroll got no interviews in last year’s cycle.
Why wouldn’t anyone interview Carroll? He’s a proven commodity.
Chicago’s interview list includes Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, Dolphins defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver, Cardinals offensive coordinator Drew Petzing, Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores, Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith, Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken, Giants assistant head coach and offensive coordinator Mike Kafka, and former Titans head coach Mike Vrabel.
The Cowboys denied the Bears’ request for permission to interview head coach Mike McCarthy, whose contract expires next week.
Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald’s decision to fire offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb was the lead topic at his end-of-season press conference on Tuesday.
Macdonald explained the decision to part ways with Grubb after one season as “an alignment thing and a vision thing” and he was asked what changed about that alignment since Grubb was hired last February.
“It just didn’t manifest itself the way that we expected,” Macdonald said. “The direction that it was going, it just wasn’t the way that I wanted to go.”
Macdonald didn’t specify exactly where things didn’t go as expected, but said he wants a physical unit that plays complementary football. He said it would oversimplifying things to say that means he’s looking to run the ball more often and added that it’s “fair” to say that he has a better idea of what he wants heading into his second season in Seattle.
Macdonald said that play-calling experience wouldn’t be a requirement for the next offensive coordinator and said that any other coaching staff changes would wait until a new coordinator is in place.
In the aftermath of Sunday’s season-ending victory over the Rams, Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith called offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb “an excellent coordinator and an even better man.”
But next season, Smith will have to get familiar with another play-caller in Seattle.
The Seahawks have fired Grubb, according to multiple reports.
Grubb, 48, was in his first year with the team and in the NFL after serving as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the University of Washington under former head coach Kalen DeBoer. While he initially agreed to follow DeBoer to Alabama, he was then hired by the Seahawks to stay in Seattle and lead the offense under first-year head coach Mike Macdonald.
But the Seahawks finished No. 14 in total yards and No. 18 in points scored in 2024, particularly struggling in the run game. Seattle finished No. 28 with 1,627 rushing yards.
While Smith finished with a 70.4 percent completion rate and 4,320 passing yards, he also threw 15 interceptions — the most he’s had since becoming Seattle’s starting quarterback in 2022.
Macdonald will now need to find a new offensive coordinator for his second season as head coach.
