Apparently, it was too much to ask of Ryan Grubb to build off his first successful game in weeks.

Coming off a dominant 30-point outing against Arizona that featured a season-high 176 yards rushing, the big question was whether Grubb could keep it going. He had four more games to prove he was good enough to remain the Seahawks’ offensive coordinator after this season. But it took only one to answer that question.

The 30-13 debacle in a huge game against the Packers lands mostly on Grubb’s shoulders as the Hawks continued to regress on his side of the ball.

It is really hard to see Mike Macdonald being OK with Grubb as his OC in 2025. With the offense struggling for most of the past two months, we now have the same feeling about Grubb that we had about Pete Carroll in the final two months of last season: It will not get better without a big change.

We were very happy that Jody Allen parted with Carroll, and we are looking forward to Macdonald picking a more suitable offensive coordinator after this season. Unlike last season, when there were few good options as Macdonald scrambled to assemble a staff, he should be able to take his time and find a more experienced NFL play caller who can help turn around the offense.

Grubb’s offense had averaged just 15.8 points in the five games before the Hawks walloped Arizona 30-18. That gave a little hope that maybe he finally understood the importance of the running game. But it quickly became clear that he did not, as he reverted to previous form against Green Bay.

Yes, the offensive line was putrid in pass protection – playing rookies at center and right guard and getting more terrible play from Laken Tomlinson and some bad beats by tackles Charles Cross and Abe Lucas.

Grubb could have done something about it, but he instead just kept calling the same broken pass plays.

He seems like a deer in headlights at the NFL level, completely overwhelmed, overmatched and in over his head. In other words, it looks all but over for him in Seattle.

Against Green Bay, he refused to take pressure off his quarterbacks and line by running the ball – something the Hawks had success doing in their limited tries.

Instead, the rookie OC panicked when down 17 points, even with most of the second half remaining. After running Zach Charbonnet thrice in the first five plays of the third quarter, Grubb completely abandoned the run. He called 18 straight passing plays – staying with it even as it failed and even after Sam Howell had to replace an injured Geno Smith.

The 19^th play? A 24-yard touchdown run by Charbonnet to cut the deficit to 23-13 with 11:16 left.

The Hawks forced a three-and-out, but Grubb decided to call three straight pass plays again, even though Howell clearly was struggling in the face of the Packers’ strong pass rush. Through his stupendous play calling, Grubb actually enabled the Packers to win the game – a total accessory to the crime.

He kept calling passes until one of Howell’s errant throws finally landed in the arms of a Green Bay defender (Edgerrin Cooper). That set up the Packers’ last TD and the Hawks were then out of time to come back. Then Grubb decided to run out the clock on the ground. It was an ironic end to a bitter loss.

It was a most horrific display of play calling – as bad as anything that led to the firings of Darrell Bevell, Brian Schottenheimer and Shane Waldron (in the Pete Carroll staff purge).

Brock Huard was with us, saying on Seattle Sports 710: “You’ve gotta protect these guys up front. They can’t be absorbing everything all the time and all this dropback (passing) game. You’ve gotta help your guys up front. And man, last night was a step back in that way. … Green Bay’s (pass rush) just teed off – largely from beginning to end.”

After Smith was hurt, Grubb didn’t even try to protect his backup QB with a few runs, taking pressure off an offensive line that had struggled in pass protection all game. The Packers had their highest QB pressure rate of the season and notched seven sacks, dominating a Seattle line that lost Olu Oluwatimi and was thus down to rookies at both center and right guard. Jalen Sundell actually did OK replacing Olu, but the line as a whole played very poorly in pass pro.

Meanwhile, Charbonnet averaged almost 7 yards per carry. But he got to carry it just eight times. We were counting the second-half pass attempts as they climbed up to 18 straight without Charbs getting a carry – in a game where he definitely could have and should have been a huge factor.

“We wanted to run it more going into the game, for sure,” Macdonald said. “We didn’t get as many runs in as we thought (we would), partially because of circumstance. But there were some opportunities in the game that (Grubb and I) both felt like runs could have been better utilized.”

In the NFL, hindsight like that is just good enough to get a play caller fired.

Macdonald also said the Hawks need to run more play action. A stat from Corbin Smith illustrates that: Ahead of the game, Geno Smith ranked 29th in play action rate on dropbacks (16.3%); he was 3 of 4 for 55 yards vs. the Packers. The coach said, “We have a good play-action pass game; probably should see more of it, frankly.”

These failures cost the Seahawks a chance to be competitive in a big game against the NFC’s No. 4 team. It is a trend that has been going on for two months, with the Arizona uprising the lone positive outlier for Grubb.

The Hawks most likely have to beat the Vikings this week to have a shot at the playoffs when they face the Rams in Week 18.

But the offense seems destined to get dominated again. Minnesota’s defense is better than Green Bay’s — No. 2 vs. the run, No. 4 in scoring, No. 2 in EPA/play.

We’ve been watching the slow, inexorable death of this offense for weeks now. It likely will lead to the end of any playoff hopes – and then, not long after, to the end of Grubb’s short tenure as Seattle offensive coordinator.