SEATTLE — While Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald indicated he would strongly favor continuity in replacing Klint Kubiak as offensive coordinator, he ultimately decided to go outside the organization, reportedly hiring San Francisco 49ers run game coordinator and tight ends coach Brian Fleury as Seattle’s new OC.

Fleury’s expected hire was first reported Sunday by ESPN and the NFL Network.

But in a sense, Macdonald got some continuity by bringing in Fleury, who worked the past seven seasons under San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan, who runs an offense that Kubiak largely brought with him to Seattle. Fleury’s time in San Francisco also overlapped with Sam Darnold’s one year as a backup quarterback for the 49ers in 2023.

Fleury has been with the 49ers since 2019 and has been the tight ends coach each of the past four seasons while also adding run game coordinator titles this season.

Hiring Fleury means the Seahawks will likely stick with the same basic offensive system that Seattle ran this season under Kubiak., who also had previously been an assistant with the 49ers under Shanahan before coming to Seattle, and grew up as the son of longtime NFL quarterback and coach Gary Kubiak, who first learned it playing for Shanahan’s father, Mike.

That offense includes using the outside zone as the foundation of its running game. Establishing both a consistent running game philosophy and success in the running game itself was played a big role in why Macdonald hired Kubiak last year to replace the fired Ryan Grubb.

After some fits and starts early in the season, the Seattle running game got progressively better as the year wore on with the Seahawks rushing for an average of 171 yards in the final three regular season games to finish at 123.3 rushing yards per game for the season, 10th in the NFL and then average just over 130 per game in three playoff contests.

It was not known that the Seahawks were interested in Fleury until it was reported Saturday that he would interview.

The Seahawks also had four known in-house candidates — quarterbacks coach Andrew Janocko, passing game coordinator Jake Peetz, assistant offensive line coach/run game specialist Justin Outten and tight ends coach Mack Brown. And the odds had seemed good Seattle would hire one of those four based on comments Macdonald made earlier in the week, specifically when he said “I think a really important part of what we want to do is have continuity” during his radio show Monday on Seattle Sports 710.

It was also thought Macdonald might hire from within to keep as much of the coaching staff together as possible.

At least one of the four in-house candidates is already gone as it was reported shortly after the Seattle hire of Fleury became public that Janocko will join Kubiak in Las Vegas as offensive coordinator.

That left it unclear immediately if Peetz, Outten and Brown will stay with the Seahawks or potentially move on. However, it was reported on Friday that the Seahawks had blocked the Raiders from interviewing Outten for the same role in Las Vegas.

Fleury is a native of Germantown, Md., where he led Seneca Valley High to a state title in 1997 as the team’s starting quarterback.

He then began his college career at Maryland before transferring to Towson University in Towson, Md., where he played quarterback from 1999-2002 before getting into coaching, including a four-year stint at Towson as special teams coordinator and defensive backs coach from 2009-12 before getting his first job in the NFL in 2013.

His NFL resume includes a rather diverse set of jobs.

His first role in the NFL was with the Buffalo Bills in 2013 as quality control coach.

He then moved on to Cleveland where he spent two years as assistant linebackers coach and then outside linebackers coach. He then moved on to Miami in 2016 where he spent three years with the Dolphins in what were non-on-field coaching roles, working one year as a football analyst and then two years as director of football research.

He then joined Shanahan and the 49ers in 2019, first as defensive quality control coach, then two years as offensive qualify control coach and then 2022 named as tight ends coach, a role he filled for three years before adding the title of run game coordinator in 2025.

In a 2022 story in The Athletic, Fleury noted how his years playing quarterback helped him as a coach.

“Playing quarterback gave me a lot of familiarity with the offense from the quarterback’s perspective,” Fleury said. “That’s where Kyle’s offense is built from. The best way to succeed in it is to know what the quarterback is thinking, what the timing of the plays are, what the quarterback is looking at from a yardage standpoint. Really in terms of defining your routes, so the decision-making process is early and easy.

“If you can think in those terms, it makes it easier to play any position in which you’re running routes and catching the ball. The other piece of it is all the time spent on defense. Coaching defensive positions, understanding how they’re structured and work together and game-planning against tight ends as an outside linebacker coach and studying them as an opponent — that gives me a little bit of an insight into things I can help with.”

In that same story, 49ers standout tight end George Kittle gave a rave review of Fleury’s coaching style.

“He’s big on all his details on every single play,” Kittle said. “He knows absolutely everything going on in the offense. … Sometimes a new point of view can reveal a lot of different things that I’ve never seen before, so I appreciate that from Coach Fleury.”

In that same story, Kittle said he felt Fleury’s years coaching defense gave him a different perspective to coaching offense.

“How he breaks them down as a defensive coach, their responsibilities and stuff, we’re getting a complete restructure and relearning of the thing,” Kittle said. “That’s very beneficial to our room. What he has is a very different perspective on the game of football.”

Fleury will have big shoes to fill in taking over for Kubiak as the Seahawks set a team record this season with 483 points, finishing third in the NFL in points per game at 28.3, eighth in yards per game at 351.4 and top 10 in both passing offense (eighth) and rushing (10th).

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