Which NFL coaching hires will have the biggest fantasy football impacts in 2025?

Hires That Move The Needle

Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears

The prize of this year’s coaching cycle, Ben Johnson takes a fantastic offensive resume from Detroit across the division to assume the head coaching position in Chicago. If you believe Johnson, he’s had his eye on this job for a while.

It’s easy to see the appeal of this gig if you believe in Caleb Williams. By all accounts, you can put Johnson among that cohort of believers.

Williams showed flashes of good play but didn’t survive behind a below-average offensive line and allowed bad habits to creep into his game. He held the ball forever, was too afraid to make a mistake and often defaulted to going too deep into progressions rather than playing instinctive football. Anyone who tells you Williams’ problem was “not wanting to play in structure,” as was his prospect reputation, did not watch his play. There’s a lot to like about Williams’ game and it’ll be up to Johnson to rewire him a bit and get him to play with more confidence.

Johnson’s offense won’t be a carbon copy of what we saw in Detroit. However, we should have significant faith that it will be well-designed in the passing phase and deploy players in roles that make sense. Neither was happening in Chicago last year.

If Johnson and Williams find a good partnership, both DJ Moore and Rome Odunze should be serious fantasy values after messy 2024 campaigns.

Odunze was much better on film than his numbers suggest and I’m fascinated to see what role he settles into this season. Moore lost faith quickly in the offensive design last season and it’s hard to blame him. He’s the type of run-after-catch threat who can make plays in space in an offense like this that is designed to get receivers into big windows.

The running game is a more complicated question. While Ben Johnson’s route concepts are the subject of my fascination, we all know the Lions offense was built on the back of a great offensive line and talented running backs. Expect several key additions to the line to try and get Chicago closer to above average upfront.

In the backfield, Johnson has history with entrenched starter D’Andre Swift — and not the good kind. Swift frustrated the coaching staff in Detroit and that ultimately led to his exit and the arrival of David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs. Perhaps I’m reading too much into that but I am projecting the Bears to move on from Swift and find another answer (or two) in the backfield. Whoever that is, they’ll be interesting fantasy options.

Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars

Liam Coen’s one year with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as their play-caller was so successful he instantly launched near the top of several head coaching searches. Jacksonville was determined to land him and even parted with embattled GM Trent Baalke to ensure Cohen was willing to take the job. Given how well Coen designed and called the Buccaneers offense and where Jacksonville sits as a franchise, you get why.

Coen mixed in wrinkles like motion and screens into some core concepts that Baker Mayfield loves. Adaptability to his quarterback’s preferences will be key once more, as getting Trevor Lawrence on track is his primary task as the top man in the organization. Lawrence has not been a failure as a starting quarterback but the ceiling has been too low to this stage. Coen’s task will be to develop a better relationship than what Lawrence enjoyed with Doug Pederson and push this offense further into modernity. Given what he showed last season, I like his chances.

Additionally, I think Coen will do wonders for 2024 rookie phenom, Brian Thomas Jr. He’s already noted the star receiver’s ability to play multiple positions, and he’s a proven threat in the screen game.

Coen’s arrival only solidifies my stance that Thomas should be one of the first 12 players on the board in drafts next season.

Elsewhere on the roster, Coen will need to partner with a yet-to-be-named GM to get an influx of talent on the offensive line. Coen schemed up a good run game in Tampa and Bucky Irving helped maximize it, but the young additions on that offensive line were the biggest factor in that unit’s growth. I’m not sure if Coen is committed to either Travis Etienne Jr. or Tank Bigsby but that question won’t matter much if they don’t fortify the front-five.

Pete Carroll, Las Vegas Raiders

Pete Carroll’s placement on this side of the list may be a surprise to some. While there are some obvious personnel projections needed to get the full sense of Carroll’s offense in Las Vegas, his mere presence assures us one thing: this team will try to commit resources right away.

If you’re at all invested in Brock Bowers or, to a lesser degree, Jakobi Meyers, Carroll’s hire moves the needle. If they went with some younger option who had some years to figure it out on the job, I could imagine the Raiders taking a “punt year” at quarterback as they tried to build up the roster. Carroll will attempt to build up the program in Year 1 but he confirmed what we all know about him in his opening presser: he will try to win right away, as well.

I expect the Raiders to pursue some kind of realistic answer for their starting quarterback spot — good news for the talented pass-catchers on the roster.

Carroll’s choice of Chip Kelly as offensive coordinator was an inspired one. It’s been a minute since Kelly has called plays at the NFL level but his units ranked fourth, seventh, 11th and fourth in rush attempts. With Carroll at head coach and Kelly at OC, I’m interested in drafting whoever becomes the Raiders’ starting running back.

Mike Vrabel, New England Patriots

Similar to the above analysis with Carroll, Mike Vrabel brings a level of professionalism and competitive approach that is good for a team that has lost its way in recent years. The fact that he knows ownership and the building is an added bonus.

Vrabel is seemingly type-casted as a meathead coach who just wants to run the ball on offense. This couldn’t be further from the truth. As Vrabel himself said recently, they leaned into their run game in Tennessee because their best player was … their running back. Vrabel has also displayed over the years he’s forward-thinking and sharp as a game manager.

Offensively, while Josh McDaniels is toxic as a head coach, he’s a good play-caller who doesn’t adhere to one rigid approach. In the post-Brady years, McDaniels was key in getting Mac Jones onboarded as a rookie and oversaw his only successful season as a starter. He also rolled out some fascinating concepts in the quarterback run game with Cam Newton in a strange 2020 chapter for this franchise.

McDaniels’ history with various quarterbacks and especially the flexibility to add a quarterback run game is huge for Drake Maye. The UNC product showed real passing upside in a dreadful situation last year and has the rushing chops to be a true fantasy starter. It’s an added bonus that, given his history, McDaniels will never sniff another head-coaching gig again, cleverly ensuring continuity for a young quarterback.

The Patriots have a long list of needs around Maye on both the offensive line and at wide receiver. The defense needs help, too. I’m not expecting a miracle turnaround in Year 1 but I think this is a good staff to get the most out of Maye, and that’s what matters for our purposes.

We’ll See About These Hires

Aaron Glenn, New York Jets

To be clear, I absolutely love the hire of Aaron Glenn. He’s exactly the type of leader and personality this team needs and he may well have enough cache to get a meddling owner to take a step back. Glenn’s presence allows the team to make the necessary clean break with the failed Aaron Rodgers experiment and the way the building operated the last few seasons.

I’m bucketing this into “we’ll see” because we don’t yet have clarity on what the offensive vision will look like for this era of Jets football.

Glenn brought Tanner Engstrand from Detroit along with him to serve as the offensive coordinator. Engstrand has never called plays in the NFL — he was an offensive coordinator in the 2020 version of the XFL and in college — but most recently held the passing-game coordinator role on Ben Johnson’s staff. He’s served as a quarterbacks, running backs and tight ends coach at various levels.

People speak highly of him and he has the right kind of diverse background you look for in an upstart coordinator. It’s just an unproven concept at the time being.

There’s frustrated young talent on the Jets’ roster, headlined by Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall. Some of New York’s recent investments on the offensive line have paid dividends, as well. If Engstrand has the goods and they get the right quarterback — of the stopgap variety, if I had to guess — there is something to get out of this group.

Brian Schottenheimer, Dallas Cowboys

I’m going to try and hedge on my analysis with this move; see if you can try to follow me to a logical conclusion.

The process to land Schottenheimer as the head coach of the Cowboys was not just objectively bad; it was laughable. Despite that, the consensus view that this hire won’t work out may not be accurate.

In fact, I like a lot of what Schottenheimer could bring to the table in terms of increased motion at the snap and an increase in play-action. His hire of Klayton Adams as the offensive coordinator is a sharp move to have a chief lieutenant who can major in the run game design. This all could be better for the offense than the general vibe toward the hire indicates.

That said, can we really call it a needle-mover for fantasy?

Mike McCarthy has his flaws as a head coach, but in 2023, he constructed an offense well-suited to Dak Prescott. It sounds like Prescott specifically lobbied for Schottenheimer as the head coach to keep many of the same principles and language in place on offense. We may see the Cowboys offense operate with a similar design as the past few seasons, with just a few more bells and whistles.

The real needle-mover for Dallas would be to add some playmakers. In my view, the Cowboys had a bigger talent, not coaching, issue on offense last season prior to Prescott’s injury. Dallas needs more talent in the backfield (Rico Dowdle is a free agent) and some actually threatening pass-catchers to work alongside CeeDee Lamb.

Kellen Moore, New Orleans Saints

The last coach hired in the cycle, Kellen Moore, is a tough coach to assess, coming off a Super Bowl win as the Eagles offensive coordinator.

Moore has an overall solid track record as an offensive coordinator. He enjoyed three seasons with top-six point-total finishes in Dallas before a nightmarish year with the Chargers following a divorce between Moore and Mike McCarthy. However, you can excuse a lot of the Chargers’ offensive woes in 2023 given the rash of injuries that went through that unit.

It’s difficult to extricate his value added to the 2024 Eagles offense considering the overwhelming talent on that team. But overall, the unit felt more buttoned-up and better constructed in the passing game than the previous season’s version. There were less protection meltdowns and the receivers were deployed in a more dynamic fashion.

Moore’s hire falls into the “we’ll see” bucket less because of what he will bring to the table as the head coach and play-caller. It’s more due to the fact I have little clue who will take the field for this team in 2025.

Moore was non-committal on Derek Carr’s status as the starting quarterback in his opening presser, which is a smart play — moving off of Carr’s contract would be a huge step toward getting the financial books in order. Moore is a former quarterback who had a great dynamic with Dak Prescott in Dallas. The Saints make sense as a team to add a rookie at some point in the draft.

Alvin Kamara will be back as the starting running back, along with Rashid Shaheed and Chris Olave in the receiving room. Both guys are coming off season-ending injuries. I’d love to project Olave into some of the deployments we saw for DeVonta Smith in the Eagles offense, where he operated as a slot receiver on more than half of his routes for the first time in his career. However, Olave’s concussion history is troubling, to put it lightly. We need to answer a significant amount of personnel questions before we can know if Moore will be a needle-mover for New Orleans.