The Seahawks promised a new offense under Klint Kubiak — one focused on running the ball and misdirecting defenses to create a much more productive unit than Mike Macdonald’s team had with Ryan Grubb last season.

It all looked good in the preseason as the Hawks ran the ball with gusto. But that all disappeared in the 17-13 opening loss to the 49ers as Kubiak’s offense looked a lot more like Grubb’s than the one that was promised this year.

Screen plays went nowhere (it’s a Seattle thing), the running game fizzled after a solid start, receivers dropped passes and fumbled and the line got overrun on the final play, forcing Sam Darnold to fumble as the Hawks threatened to score the winning TD. The Hawks were 3 for 10 on third downs, leading to a nearly 2-1 disparity in time of possession. They rushed for just 84 yards — at 3.2 per carry.

“Yeah, hot and cold,’’ Macdonald said. “We’ve got to maintain the ball better and be more efficient on early downs, convert more on third down.’’

Jaxon Smith-Njigba gained 124 of their 230 yards, leading Macdonald to quip, “We’ll see who else steps up so it’s not just the Jax show every snap.”

Macdonald should first look at his offensive coordinator. Kubiak called a terrible game, not helping Darnold nearly enough. On one series that kind of summed up the ineptitude, Kubiak called a receiver screen that lost eight yards, then a deep shot to JSN that missed, then a Grubb-like pitch and lateral that ended up out of bounds.

The Hawks seemed to use a lot more 11 personnel than expected — yet their receivers other than JSN did nothing. They rarely just lined up with tight ends and fullback Robbie Ouzts and powered the ball on the ground, as they had done in preseason. Ken Walker ran for just 20 yards on 10 attempts, while Zach Charbonnet gained 47 on 12 runs — further evidence that Charbs should be the lead back.

This offense is set up to succeed off the run, so Kubiak definitely needs to make sure his game plans revolve around that.

“Obviously very disappointed about the outcome,” Macdonald said. “But got to look at the process as well. I think our guys played incredibly hard, played all 60 minutes, gave ourselves a chance to win at the end.

“I think we have a really good football team and we’re not there yet, so let’s go work, figure out things we can do better, and move forward, which we will. We’re a good team now. We’re only going to get better. So the guys will respond — and let’s go have a great week and go to Pittsburgh.’’

Woolen the weak link on defense

We have been very vocal in our criticisms of Riq Woolen — going so far as to push for a trade and to predict that the Hawks will not bother to try to keep him after this last year of his rookie deal.

While most of the rest of the defense played like a top-10 unit vs. the 49ers, Woolen had a terrible game and ultimately cost the Hawks by giving up a 45-yard pass play and then the go-ahead touchdown on the same drive in the final quarter.

He had no awareness or focus on either pass — both of which should have been knocked down by the 6-4 cover corner.

Ricky Pearsall, who beat him on the 45-yarder, said, “I just felt him coming up. The entire game, he liked to play back in. That’s what we knew when we were watching film. On the sideline we were just talking about it: ‘We need to go deep one time. We need to hit something like that.’”

Woolen also was called for two penalties prior to that drive. It was just a terrible game — and you really have to wonder how long Macdonald is going to tolerate his continued poor play. It is why we wanted the Hawks to draft a corner in the second round this year and then trade Woolen. We might be seeing a lot of Shaq Griffin before long.