New coach-player scheme pairings to watch
2026 NFL season: New coach-player scheme pairings to watch
Ben Solak
Today's NFL has more offseason movement than ever, and with that movement comes an abundance of new coach-player pairings. Half of the league has a new offensive playcaller this year, which in turn puts many incumbent playmakers in reimagined roles. Bigger names are traded more willingly as the salary cap balloons upward, which allows near-contenders to handpick the perfect missing players to push their teams over the edge.
I highlighted eight new coach-player pairings across the league that I'm excited to see in 2026. There are truly hundreds to choose from, and many interesting duos didn't make this cut. (How will Sean Mannion use DeVonta Smith in A.J. Brown's absence? How will Kenneth Walker III change how Andy Reid calls the Chiefs' offense?) But these are the eight that I think have the most potential -- and also the most mystery.
Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell and QB Kyler Murray
There's an idea out there that Murray is not a good fit in O'Connell's offense. It's half right.
O'Connell's offense, as we know it, has been built around pocket passers. He was the offensive coordinator under McVay in 2020 and 2021, which was the end of the Jared Goff era and beginning of the Matthew Stafford era. From there, he joined Minnesota, where he coached Kirk Cousins and Sam Darnold. These offenses have been unsurprisingly similar given the shared archetypes: big frames, talented arms and a willingness to throw over the middle of the field.
This is not Murray. Like most shorter quarterbacks, Murray prefers to play from the shotgun and sink deep into the pocket during his dropbacks (it helps him see the entire field). To this point in his career, Murray has largely avoided throwing to the intermediate middle -- which the McVay/O'Connell offenses tends to feature -- in large part because shorter QBs struggle to see those throwing windows and get the ball up and over the first level of the defense. Across the past five seasons, Murray is 36th among 40 high-volume quarterbacks in the percentage of throws going 10-20 yards downfield and between the numbers. Cousins is eighth, Stafford is 10th, Goff is 11th and Darnold is 13th.
In this way, Murray is a poor fit for O'Connell's offense. But O'Connell's offense is not a static thing. Over his seasons as the Vikings' head coach, he has done well to put imperfect quarterbacks in strong positions to succeed. Last season, both J.J. McCarthy and Carson Wentz attempted fewer passes to the intermediate middle than any other quarterback O'Connell coached in Minnesota or Los Angeles. Wentz was under center on only 37.4% of his dropbacks, again O'Connell's lowest mark. McCarthy threw more deep outbreaking routes than any O'Connell quarterback -- the sort of routes that O'Connell will need for Murray, as they're easier for him to see.
This isn't the first time O'Connell has done this. He got functional play out of Nick Mullens and Joshua Dobbs in 2023 after Cousins' Achilles injury. In both instances, he didn't throw out his entire offense but rather tweaked it to fit his spot starter. Dobbs got more bootlegs and rollouts to accentuate his mobility. Mullens got more play-action shot opportunities to lean into his inherently aggressive style of play.
O'Connell has endured a far more brutal carousel of quarterbacking quality than his fellow branches off the McVay tree, including McVay himself, Matt LaFleur and Zac Taylor. As such, we've seen him forced to innovate more desperately. I'd argue this puts him in a better position than Taylor or LaFleur might be to build a quick-fix offense around Murray's strengths and deficiencies. He has had to solve similar problems in the past.
It's easy to see how Murray doesn't fit in the O'Connell offense -- he doesn't throw to the middle of the field well and doesn't hang tall in the pocket. Harder to see but perhaps more impactful is what he might do to the O'Connell offense, or in other words, what he might precipitate out of this system that has spread rapidly across the league.
Murray is without question the best running QB to start in a McVay-inspired offense. Trey Lance in San Francisco could be a comparison, but we never saw him keep that job without getting injured. Malik Willis in Green Bay is another fair comparison, and Willis was one of the league's best backup QBs when his legs were wrinkled into LaFleur's scheme. LaFleur has developed a highly diverse shotgun running game to replace some of the under-center formations that McVay and O'Connell still rely on. Will O'Connell crib from that playbook to include Murray zone read threats?
The ceiling in Minnesota with Murray is far, far higher than we're inclined to estimate. The most recent tastes in our mouths for O'Connell and Murray are bad ones: O'Connell couldn't develop McCarthy, and Murray couldn't grow in Arizona. But these are similar circumstances to those under which Daniel Jones and Shane Steichen joined forces in Indianapolis, and they produced truly historic offensive numbers (for a couple of months). Desperation can foster spectacular innovation in the NFL.
Others in the article Include:
Titans OC Brian Daboll and QB Cam Ward
49ers coach Kyle Shanahan and WR Mike Evans
Raiders coach Klint Kubiak and TE Brock Bowers
Broncos coach Sean Payton and WR Jaylen Waddle
Titans coach Robert Saleh and DT Jeffery Simmons
Rams DC Chris Shula and edge rusher Myles Garrett
Chargers OC Mike McDaniel and RB Omarion Hampton
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"Over his seasons as the Vikings' head coach, he has done well to put imperfect quarterbacks in strong positions to succeed."
Complete bullshit. This just screams of a writer who has paid no attention to whats actually happened and is just going off the normal media fluff about OConnell. They must have missed the part about OConnell's complete reluctance to bend the offense to better suit the strengths of his quarterbacks last year until getting called out in the media and by the fanbase. It's the biggest reason I'm apprehensive about the Murray fit in Minnesota.
This topic has been beat to death.
What hasn't is Keith Carter. IMO this is the biggest coaching change to pay attention to. I have been saying for a long time that our OL coaches have been ass since Morris left. They had no killer instinct and gave up on plays as soon as the ball was a few feet away from them.
Seriously just think about it...
Kuper, Rauscher, Dennison, Sparano (RIP) & Davidson. All terrible OL coaches. Atleast when they were with us.
Last good OL coach we had was Pat Morris. Mckinnie, Hutch, Birk, Herrera & Loadholt.
A healthier team (how could it not be?) + some better QB1 play = a better team. It ain't rocket science.
I do think it's kind of funny that the offense that will work best is probably pretty similar as the offense for JJM (or at least as he's going through his growing pains).
Only thing I can add is I think we're about to see more shotgun and bootlegs here in MN than we've seen in a long, long time...
Since Culpepper?
Hurry-up Vikings, we ain't getting any younger!
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