In the 2025 NFL season, there are 12 new offensive play-callers on teams that range from the Super Bowl champions to four-win also-rans. Like the teams, the coaches are wide-ranging.
Over one-third of NFL teams in the 2025 season will have a different offensive play-caller from last season.
Twelve of the 32 teams move forward with a switch at the offensive controls, ranging from head coaches with a penchant for play-calling, first-time offensive coordinators who earned promotions and former coordinators who joined new clubs.
While it may be hard to ascertain exactly how they’ll fare in these new roles, the variance of where these new play-callers came from provide an idea of what each new offense could be like – for better or worse.
Following is a breakdown of what to expect from the new play-callers based on their history and experience:
The Shanahan and McVay Coaches
First, we need to look at everyone’s favorite coaching tree: Anyone who’s worked with Kyle Shanahan or Sean McVay. In recent years, those two and their disciples have, for the most part, created offensive systems that have performed better than the ones that preceded them.
This year, there are three such new play-callers to watch: Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Liam Coen (who worked under McVay with the Los Angeles Rams); Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak (Shanahan’s passing game coordinator with the San Francisco 49ers in 2023 before serving as the New Orleans Saints OC in 2024); and Houston Texans offensive coordinator Nick Caley (who coached under McVay with the Rams).
History bodes well for this trio. Just look at how much better the offensive success was for these eight teams after Shanahan, McVay or a disciple took over play-calling. All but two saw at least a 2.0% average success rate boost compared with their predecessors’ average since 2016.
We also may finally get the answer to which head coaching tree is better for a team’s offense after the Texans moved on from a former Shanahan assistant (Bobby Slowik) after two seasons to a former McVay assistant (Caley) this season.
Chicago Bears Head Coach Ben Johnson
One of the more-coveted head coaching candidates since McVay or Shanahan was Ben Johnson, who landed with the Chicago Bears after he helped turn the Detroit Lions offense around over the past three seasons.
The Lions offense’s success rate was 5.0% better on average with Johnson running the show than any of the franchise’s other play-callers since 2016. He’s also had the second-highest average offensive success rate (43.38%) since 2020 among non-head coaches with at least two years of calling plays.
Only Todd Monken of the Baltimore Ravens was higher at 43.81%.
Chicago hopes Johnson can do for quarterback Caleb Williams what he did for Jared Goff, who blossomed from a middling former No. 1 overall pick with McVay and the Rams into one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL with the Lions.
But in Johnson’s rookie head coaching campaign, the Bears will face one of the toughest schedules in the NFL – primarily due to the ultra-competitive NFC North.
New Orleans Saints Head Coach Kellen Moore
Kellen Moore has been in the spotlight with his offensive coordinator experience. He began his coaching career with the Cowboys before stints with the Los Angeles Chargers in 2023 and the Philadelphia Eagles for last year’s Super Bowl-winning season.
His offenses have averaged a 40.05% offensive success rate since 2020, which ranks 20th among play-callers with at least two years of experience but ninth among non-head coaches.
Moore was best at bolstering his team’s passing offenses. Their 42.56% average pass success rate ranks fifth among non-head coaches with at least two years of play-calling experience since 2020.
When including the head coaches, he ranks 10th among those still calling plays in the NFL.
Who Moore coaches at quarterback to start his tenure in New Orleans will be the biggest question. It won’t be the recently retired Derek Carr, so his current choices include 2025 second-round draft pick Tyler Shough, 2024 fifth-rounder Spencer Rattler and 2023 fourth-rounder Jake Haener.
Moore has never worked with such an inexperienced group of QBs during his coaching career.
The Recycled
New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer have both had a lot of play-calling opportunities in their careers.
This will be Daniels’ 19th year calling offensive plays and it’s his third different coaching stint with the Patriots. He’s also been the head coach of the Denver Broncos, offensive coordinator of the St. Louis Rams and head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders during his career.
What’s important to understand about McDaniels is that his offenses are great when he’s a coordinator and bad when he’s the head coach: He’s had a top-10 scoring offense in 12 of his 14 seasons as an offensive coordinator and a bottom-19 scoring offense in three of his four years across his two head coaching jobs. That bodes well for coach Mike Vrabel in his first season with the Patriots.
As for Schottenheimer, he’s called offensive plays for the New York Jets (2006-11), Rams (2012-14) and Seahawks (2018-20) before his current role in Dallas. He’s been with the Cowboys since 2022, so he’s familiar with quarterback Dak Prescott and the offensive system.
Schottenheimer has had middling success in his time as a play-caller. His scoring offense averaged around 15th in the league during his 12 seasons, although he built a top-nine offense in all three seasons in Seattle.
The Unknowns
There are five other new offensive play-callers in 2025 with varying degrees of NFL experience: Chip Kelly (Las Vegas Raiders); John Morton (Lions); Josh Grizzard (Tampa Bay Buccaneers); Kevin Patullo (Eagles); and Tanner Engstrand (Jets). Kelly and Morton are veteran coaches, Grizzard and Patullo gained internal promotions, and Engstrand was brought over from Detroit by new Jets head coach Aaron Glenn.
Predicting their ability to influence an offense is difficult, so an assessment of their background is helpful.
Kelly hasn’t been in the NFL since he was the 49ers’ head coach in 2016. That squad had a 36.4% offensive success rate and Kelly lasted one season. He previously had been the Eagles’ head coach when his offenses went from top-five in 2013 and ’14 to outside the top 10 in 2015.
Morton has mostly been a position coach or assistant during his NFL coaching career, but he was a one-time offensive coordinator with the Jets in 2017. That team had a 32.7% offensive success rate, but it lacked standouts on that side of the ball.
Grizzard is intriguing, as he only turns 35 next month and has worked under coaches such as Adam Gase, Chan Gailey, George Godsey and Mike McDaniel in Miami as well as alongside Coen with Tampa Bay. He inherits a Bucs offense that averaged a near 40.4% success rate and 25 points per game over the past two seasons.
Patullo was Nick Sirianni’s passing game coordinator with the Eagles last season and had coached alongside him with the Indianapolis Colts. He’s been elevated with the defending Super Bowl champions, and it’s not too shabby for a first-time offensive coordinator to be able to lean on skills position players such as Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley, A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith.
Engstrand is the biggest question mark of the new play-callers. The Jim Harbaugh disciple has only been an NFL coach since 2020, when he joined Dan Campbell’s Lions staff, but he’s moved up the ranks every year until he became Ben Johnson’s passing game coordinator in 2023. It’s difficult to know what type of coordinator Engstrand will be without Johnson.
All 12 new NFL play-callers come with their differences in experience, but they’ll have profound influences on their teams in their new roles in 2025.
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