There are first games, and then there are first games that quietly tell you a lot about what a team is trying to become. Wednesday night against the New England Patriots will be Brian Fleury’s first time calling offensive plays as the Seattle Seahawks open the regular season, which means Seattle is not just beginning a campaign — it is handing real responsibility to a coach whose route to this job has been anything but conventional.
Fleury arrived in February to replace Klint Kubiak, who left after one season as the Seahawks’ offensive coordinator. That alone makes this an unusual opener. Most teams begin the year with at least some familiarity at the top of the offensive structure. Seattle is starting with a new play caller, a new voice and, at least for now, a new layer of uncertainty about how the offense will look when the game is on the line.
The background helps explain why the Seahawks were comfortable making the move. Fleury has spent four seasons in roles that ranged across defense, special teams and research before taking his first full-time offensive job in 2020 with the San Francisco 49ers as an offensive quality control coach. Before that, he worked as a football analyst for the Miami Dolphins in 2016 and then served as the Dolphins’ director of football research from 2017 to 2018. In other words, this is not a coach who suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It is a coach who has climbed into offense after years of learning the sport from multiple angles.
That broader background is part of the appeal. Drew Lock pointed to Fleury’s ability to move from the details of the run game and blocking to the teaching side of tight ends and pass concepts, saying it is notable to see him take over “his own offense” and shape “his own image” of how a game should be called. Eric Saubert made a similar point, describing Fleury as highly studied and praising his ability to explain everyone’s roles clearly in the moment. For an offensive coordinator, that kind of communication can matter almost as much as the scheme itself.
The real test is not preparation, it is translation
Fleury has already emphasized advance planning for every situation, which is exactly what a first-time play caller needs when the season starts. The challenge is whether that preparation can translate when the game starts moving faster, when one failed drive changes the feel of a half, and when the Seahawks need answers in real time. Fleury himself has framed coaching as a product of perspective and persistence, saying he was “not a very good football player after high school” and later realizing coaching was the path that would keep him in the game.
That mentality fits the job. He has also said that what appears on the surface is not always what is happening internally, and that he tends to move immediately to the next scenario after something good happens. That is the mindset of a planner, and possibly the right one for an offense that is starting fresh under a new coordinator. But planning and calling are not the same thing, and Wednesday night will offer the first real evidence of how those skills look when the Seahawks are forced to live them out in front of the New England Patriots.
So the story here is not simply that Seattle hired a new offensive coordinator in February. It is that the Seahawks are opening the season with a coach making his play-calling debut, and that makes the offense one of the most interesting unknowns of the week. Fleury has the résumé of a teacher, the reputation of a detail-oriented communicator and the trust of players who have already noticed the way he explains the game. Now he gets the part that cannot be prepared in advance: making the right call when the season is actually underway.
