The Seahawks are hiring longtime NFL assistant Mike Solari to replace Tom Cable as offensive line coach, a source has confirmed to the Seattle Times.
The Seahawks are hiring veteran Mike Solari as their offensive line coach to replace the fired Tom Cable.
The news, first reported by Mike Garafolo of the NFL Network, was confirmed by a source to the Seattle Times.
Solari is familiar to Seattle having been the OL coach of the Seahawks in 2008-09 and has also been with the Cowboys, Cardinals, 49ers, Chiefs, Packers and Giants in an NFL coaching career that dates to 1987.
Solari, who will turn 63 on Tuesday, was the tight ends coach and assistant offensive line coach with the 49ers in 1995-96 when Seattle coach Pete Carroll was the team’s defensive coordinator.
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Solari, whose two seasons in Seattle were the last season for Mike Holmgren and the only season for Jim Mora, had a chance to stay in Seattle when Carroll was hired in 2010, offered a job as the tight ends coach.
But he decided instead to take a job with the 49ers and as offensive line coach. He worked with the 49ers from 2010-14 — the last four seasons under Jim Harbaugh when San Francisco advanced to three straight NFC title games and had one of the best rushing attacks in the NFL — then spent a year with the Packers and the 2016 and 2017 seasons with the Giants, who fired coach Ben McAdoo during the season.
Solari also spent the 2006-07 seasons as the offensive coordinator of the Kansas City Chiefs. He began his career with the Chiefs in 1997 and was the offensive line coach for two seasons under Marty Schottenheimer, whose son Brian has been hired by the Seahawks as their new offensive coordinator to replace the fired Darrell Bevell.
In fact, Solari’s apparent hiring means the Seahawks have filled their three biggest assistant coach openings of the offseason, having hired Schottenheimer as offensive coordinator and bringing back former linebackers coach Ken Norton Jr. as defensive coordinator.
Solari has experience with a wide variety of blocking schemes but it was under his tutelage that the Seahawks went to predominantly a zone blocking scheme in 2008 that the team kept when Carroll was hired in 2010 and used mostly under Cable when he came aboard in 2011.
It was during Solari’s first Seattle tenure that the team drafted Max Unger in the second round in 2009 with Unger becoming an immediate starter that season at guard before moving to center for good in 2011 under Cable.