What to Expect from the New Play-Callers

The NFL Coaching Carousel is Constantly Spinning

Turnover is a given in the NFL, but 2025 brings another wave of major upheaval. Seven teams will open Week 1 with new head coaches. As usual, the turnover at the coordinator level was extensive. Fourteen teams, nearly half the league, are installing new offensive coordinators, while eleven teams have new defensive coordinators. Special teams weren’t spared either, with eight new hires.

Getting these coaching decisions right is critically important, both on the field and in fantasy football. Kliff Kingsbury returned to the NFL and immediately turned rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels into an MVP candidate. Kellen Moore proved to be the missing piece in reigniting the Eagles offense, elevating a unit that had stagnated the year prior. On the flip side, not every hire clicked. Luke Getsy in Las Vegas, Shane Waldron in Chicago, and Ryan Grubb in Seattle failed to earn a second season.

This year, twelve teams will feature new offensive play-callers, including a mix of first-timers and veterans returning to the role. Each situation carries its own mix of risk and reward. For fantasy managers, understanding where those changes will most impact player value is essential.

Evaluating coaches is difficult, but we can try to handicap the fantasy impact by focusing on three lenses:

• What is their play-calling experience?
• How have they performed in the past?
• Are they implementing a new system?

The Seasoned Veterans: Josh McDaniels (NE) and Brian Schottenheimer (DAL)

In a league where the average play-caller lasts just over two seasons, the Patriots and Cowboys took a different path by hiring two coaches with deep NFL résumés. Josh McDaniels is only 48 years old but has logged 23 seasons in the league, including an impressive 18 as a play-caller. His experience includes two stints as a head coach, but he is best known for his previous runs as New England's offensive coordinator under Bill Belichick. Brian Schottenheimer brings 25 years of experience, with 12 as a play-caller. Ironically, he was the play-calling offensive coordinator in all three of his prior stops (Jets, Rams, Seahawks), but spent the last two seasons in Dallas as the non-play-calling OC before being elevated to head coach this offseason.

Josh McDaniels – New England Patriots

• New system? YES (Erhardt-Perkins)
• Experience as an NFL play-caller? YES, 18 seasons
• Past performance? Elite with New England, poor elsewhere

The Situation: McDaniels returns to New England for a third time, though this stint is markedly different. He’ll be working under a new head coach, Mike Vrabel, and with a new starting quarterback, Drake Maye. That makes it tough to draw clear parallels to his earlier Patriots runs. It’s obvious owner Robert Kraft values continuity with the Belichick era, as this is the second straight year he has hired a former Patriots assistant to lead the team. Fortunately, Vrabel arrives with a more proven track record than Jerod Mayo did a year ago. McDaniels inherits a team with one of the league’s worst offensive lines and a young quarterback who has elite tools but lacked the supporting cast and infrastructure in 2024 to build confidence about his long-term ceiling.

The Verdict: Optimism is understandable given McDaniels' previous success in Foxborough, but nothing is guaranteed. His Patriots offenses never finished worse than 8th in points scored, though most of those seasons were with Tom Brady. In his six years calling plays elsewhere, McDaniels’ offenses averaged a much less inspiring 22nd-place finish. The one bright spot was 2021, when his offense with rookie Mac Jones finished 6th in scoring. Expect a balanced attack that uses a versatile ground game to set up play-action shots for Maye. The challenge will be patience. McDaniels runs a complex system that can overwhelm young players. If he has learned from past missteps, he will build the foundation first and ramp up complexity later, likely making this more of a 2026 breakout offense than a 2025 one.

Brian Schottenheimer – Dallas Cowboys

• New system? YES (Run-heavy Air Coryell)
• Experience as an NFL play-caller? YES, 12 seasons
• Past performance? League-average with wide seasonal dispersion

The Situation: The Cowboys’ offensive evolution has been strange. Kellen Moore remained the play-caller under Jason Garrett and initially carried over under Mike McCarthy, until McCarthy took back play-calling duties himself. That move may have ultimately led to McCarthy’s dismissal. After striking out on a few external candidates, the team promoted Schottenheimer to head coach. This marks his first NFL head coaching opportunity, coming after 25 years in the league. Dallas had the NFL’s best offense in 2023 under McCarthy’s play-calling, but fell to 21st in 2024 as Dak Prescott missed half the season, the offensive line crumbled, and the running back room offered nothing of value. Owner Jerry Jones believes his roster is ready to compete for a Super Bowl, and that puts serious pressure on Schottenheimer to turn things around immediately. Since taking over, he has promised a run-heavy identity that uses pre-snap motion to create mismatches and open lanes for Dallas' playmakers.

The Verdict: Some positive regression is expected simply because the 2024 version of this offense underperformed its talent level. Schottenheimer has produced four top-10 offenses during his play-calling tenure, but those teams were often run-heavy to a fault. The real question is whether the current roster can support a ground-first approach, especially when the top three offensive players are Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, and George Pickens. We know what Schottenheimer wants the offense to be. What remains to be seen is whether the personnel and weekly game scripts will allow him to stay on script.

Calling All the Shots: Ben Johnson (CHI), Liam Coen (JAX), and Kellen Moore (PHI)

These play-callers turned their success as offensive coordinators into head coaching opportunities. All three are stepping into the top role for the first time. It's important to remember that being a great head coach requires a completely different skill set than calling plays, and NFL history is full of brilliant coordinators who struggled once given full control. Each of these first-time head coaches is inheriting a struggling offense, but the potential for rapid improvement varies significantly depending on the quality of the roster they take over.

Ben Johnson – Chicago Bears

• New system? YES (Erhardt-Perkins and West Coast hybrid)
• Experience as an NFL play-caller? YES, 3 seasons
• Past performance? Elite, three top 5 seasons

The Situation: Ben Johnson has been the most sought-after head coaching candidate for several cycles, and he finally accepted the challenge by taking charge of his former division rival in Chicago. Johnson has proven calculating, waiting patiently for what he believed would be the right situation. In Chicago, he inherits an offense that finished 28th in points (a low bar) but features a young franchise quarterback in Caleb Williams and a stacked receiving corps. The offensive line remains a work in progress, but the front office invested heavily by bringing in three veteran starters and a high-upside rookie.

Johnson’s NFL resume is impeccable. He took over one of the league’s worst offenses in Detroit and turned it into a perennial top-5 unit. His system is adaptable; Detroit could win by airing it out or grinding out tough games on the ground. Most importantly, Johnson handpicked this job because he believes Williams, last year’s No. 1 overall pick, can quickly emerge as one of the league’s best young passers.

The Verdict: Nothing is guaranteed, but Johnson is the closest thing to a sure bet in this hiring cycle. The Lions offense was aimless under Anthony Lynn, but Johnson was promoted from within and immediately transformed it into a balanced, creative unit that could score from anywhere on the field. After back-to-back top-5 finishes, Detroit climbed to the top of the league in 2024.

While the Bears offensive line isn’t on par with Detroit’s elite unit, the pieces are in place to build cohesion and rise up the rankings. As long as Caleb Williams is as good as Johnson believes, the Bears should be a fantasy goldmine and one of the NFL’s most improved offenses in 2025.