The Seahawks offense needed a reboot heading into the 2018 season. The scheme had grown stale under offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell. The running game was no longer effective. And the offensive line had somehow taken a step back. In January, the team fired Bevell as well as maligned offensive line coach Tom Cable.

Later that offseason, the Legion of Boom defense that had been the beating heart of the Super Bowl-winning team was dismantled. Veteran leaders Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor, Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril were either shipped out or retired. The team was officially Russell Wilson’s, and it was time to build a modern offense to match his modern game.

So what did the Seahawks do? They hired Brian Schottenheimer as offensive coordinator. A man who has designed exactly one top-15 offense during his decade as an NFL play-caller. A man who was run out of college football after spending one season running Georgia’s offense into the ground. A man who says stuff like this in 2018…

Multiple times, new offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer says the key for #Seahawks offense to improve, win games is to run the ball when defenses know they are going to run it in 2018. @thenewstribune pic.twitter.com/LjwPzr3y4T — Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) May 30, 2018

Instead of building around Wilson, Pete Carroll decided to build around his outdated run-first philosophy. Given their personnel, the Seahawks should be running a scheme built around quick-hitting pass concepts, option-style runs and the occasional deep shot downfield — something resembling what the Chiefs are currently doing with Patrick Mahomes. Throughout his career as an NFL coach, Schottenheimer offenses have taken the opposite approach; he favors condensed formations, power runs and a passing game built around deep shots coming off play-action.

That sort of offense can still be effective in today’s NFL, but it requires a dominant offensive line that can consistently open up holes in the run game and protect for long-developing pass plays. The Seahawks line is simply incapable of doing either. And Wilson gets worse as a quarterback the longer he’s forced to stay in the pocket.

Unsurprisingly, Schottenheimer’s offense has gotten off to a sputtering start. After an uneven performance in Denver to open the season, the offense did nothing for the first three quarters of the Seahawks’ 24-17 loss in Chicago, which sent the team’s record to 0-2.

The lack of creativity was startling, especially when juxtaposed with a Bears offense that has infused a bunch of college-inspired concepts into its scheme in order to take advantage of Mitch Trubisky’s mobility. The Seahawks, meanwhile, treated Wilson like a late-career John Elway.

Read Option, Sprint Right Option, Speed Option….TE Screen, Gap Screen, Slot Screen, Bubble Screen, RB Screen….Draw, Sprint Draw, Play Action Off Draw…No Huddle, Muddle Huddle, Quick Break Huddle…Many ways to use Bears aggressiveness against them. Seen almost none of this — Brock Huard (@BrockESPN) September 18, 2018

The less time Wilson spends with the ball in the pocket, the better off the Seahawks offense will be. It has never been his game to sit in a tight pocket and cycle through his progressions. No, he’s at his best when the offense hastens the tempo and spreads things out, which both simplifies the coverages a defense can call, making it easier for Wilson to get a good pre-snap read and get the ball out of his hands, and tires out the pass rush, making things easier on Seattle’s overmatched line.

Wilson’s two fourth-quarter turnovers ultimately did Seattle in on Monday night, but it wasn’t until that final frame that the Seahawks offense was able to move the ball. Why? Because the Seahawks went no-huddle and spread things out.

It’s no coincidence that Wilson has been at his absolute best when the Seahawks have been forced to adopt those strategies. Wilson set a record for fourth-quarter touchdown passes in 2017 using these same strategies. And the most prolific stretch of Wilson’s career came at the tail end of the 2015 season and was sparked by Bevell shifting to more of a quick-strike, spread offense.

Thinking this run-first approach is what’s best for Wilson and the offense requires a stunning level of ignorance. The Seahawks are not only ignoring the evidence the showing Wilson is better suited for a different scheme, but also the mounting statistical evidence that running the ball is just not conducive to an efficient offense.

The NFL hasn’t developed into a passing league by accident. It has been a Darwinian evolution. Survival of the fittest. The best teams have been the ones that were best at passing and started doing it more and more. Losing teams took note and followed suit, and the stubborn, run-first guys coaches were slowly phased out. There were a few old-school thinkers who slipped through the cracks — Jeff Fisher, Mike Mularkey, etc. — but front offices eventually saw the damage they were doing to their young quarterbacks and replaced them with new age coaches.

Thanks to the all-time great defense that Carroll developed, the Seahawks had managed to remain competitive as its offense fell further and further behind the times. But now that defense has been dismantled and his draconian approach to offense has been exposed. If Carroll is unwilling to shift his thinking, which might require a swift change at offensive coordinator if Schottenheimer isn’t on board, then the organization may have to pull the plug on this era of Seahawks football entirely by saying goodbye to the man who envisioned it.

Carroll made his choice in the offseason; he chose his precious philosophy over the good of the franchise’s most important player, and we’ve seen the dreadful returns early in what figures to be a long season. The Seahawks organization can’t afford to make the same mistake.