With the hirings made on Sunday morning, the NFL\u2019s offensive play-callers are now set for the 2026 season. As it stands now, there are 18 head coaches who double up as offensive play-callers in the league, 6 who double up as defensive play-callers and just 8 teams that are willing to live in the head-coach-as-CEO world (Chargers, Commanders, Eagles, Falcons, Giants, Lions, Patriots and Texans).<\/p>\n
One thing that is interesting to me is how few of these \u201cnew\u201d play-callers are getting their first shot at calling plays in the NFL. The NFL has been on a firing spree, as ownership seems to want to pull triggers on multi-million-dollar buyouts quicker over the last two seasons, but these coaching searches aren\u2019t really unearthing any new names. As it turns out, more firings just means more retread hires.<\/p>\n
This is also true at the head coach and defensive play-caller level, too, but today, I want to focus on the league\u2019s offensive play-callers. Let\u2019s dive in.<\/p>\n
Returning Offensive Play-Callers<\/p>\n
These two data points are why teams are leaning into hiring play-callers as head coaches. It\u2019s a lot easier to stabilize your club with a dual-role head coach than to find a new offensive coordinator every year. Every hiring cycle is an opportunity for failure. Few play-calling offensive coordinators are retained year-to-year. If he succeeds, he\u2019s almost certain to get a head coaching opportunity quickly.<\/p>\n
The one caveat here is that there is some debate in Denver about whether Sean Payton will continue to be the team\u2019s play-caller or if that job will go to Davis Webb, who was promoted from quarterbacks coach to offensive coordinator this offseason after receiving head coaching interviews. Beyond Webb\u2019s case, there has been clear reporting on the other 31 play-calling situations around the league.<\/p>\n
Newly Hired Offensive Play-Callers<\/p>\n
Joe Brady was actually already the Buffalo Bills\u2019 offensive play-caller, as he was promoted from offensive coordinator to head coach this offseason. All of these other head coaches, unsurprisingly, also have backgrounds in calling plays in the NFL.<\/p>\n
This is where you might expect to see fresh names, new ideas, etc., from the league: play-calling offensive coordinator hires. If you expected that, though, you\u2019d be wrong. Of the 12 newly hired offensive coordinators in play-calling roles, two-thirds of them are retread play-callers.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a breakdown of guys who have previous experience in play-calling:<\/p>\n
Of the 32 offensive play-callers league-wide, these four are the only coaches who are getting their first crack at a fresh opportunity in 2026:<\/p>\n
So, yeah, those are really the only new names to learn for 2026. Outside of them, the NFL has been a big game of musical chairs this offseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the hirings made on Sunday morning, the NFL\u2019s offensive play-callers are now set for the 2026 season.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":754950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2072],"tags":[1227,7,41,345,97481,2702,2514,2513,6,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-754949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-bay-packers","8":"tag-around-the-nfl","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-green-bay","11":"tag-green-bay-packers","12":"tag-green-bay-packers-coaching-staff","13":"tag-green-bay-packers-news","14":"tag-greenbay","15":"tag-greenbaypackers","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-packers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116077501231664086","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}