There are so many factors that influence fantasy football production. Talent matters, but so does coaching, specifically how a player is used. Every year, we continue to see the impact good coaching can have on improving a player’s production, as well as how bad coaching can destroy someone’s fantasy value.
Seven teams have a new head coach in 2025. Even more have new offensive coordinators, which will also factor into this list. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the top winners and losers from the coaching carousel.
Fantasy Football Winners
Caleb Williams, DJ Moore, and the Chicago Bears’ Offense
Detroit’s Offensive Touchdown Rate By Season
- 2021 (before Ben Johnson took over): 19.7% TD rate
- 2022: 29.5% TD rate
- 2023: 30.5% TD rate
- 2024: 37.4% TD rate
Last season, the Bears’ touchdown rate was 18.2%, 24th in the league. The question is whether Johnson can do for the Bears pretty much exactly what he did for the Lions.
Jared Goff recorded QB+ grades that placed him in the bottom half of the NFL during each of his three seasons before Johnson became his offensive coordinator:
- 2019: 73.7 (C) grade ranked 19th
- 2020: 72.4 (C-) grade ranked 24th
- 2021: 63.8 (D) grade ranked 26th
However, in the three seasons after Johnson became the offensive coordinator, Goff improved his QB+ grade each season and never ranked outside the top six.
- 2022: 84.0 (B) grade ranked 6th
- 2023: 84.1 (B) grade ranked 4th
- 2024: 92.5 (A-) grade ranked 2nd
Caleb Williams ranked 33rd out of 39 qualifying QBs in 2024 with a 63.1 (D) grade, almost the exact same figure Goff recorded in 2021 before Johnson took over.
Williams was obviously not good as a rookie, but he had truly horrendous coaches around him. The latest report that former OC Shane Waldron refused to watch film with his rookie QB has me more inclined to give Williams a pass.
On the receiving side of things, could Johnson make Moore his new Amon-Ra St. Brown? I suspect he will try.
Whether Williams can deliver the ball to Moore as well as Goff can deliver it to ARSB remains to be seen. But in Year 2, if Williams can take a step forward and Johnson can inject some creativity into this offense, we could see Moore rebound to 2023 levels of production when he averaged a career-best 16.9 ppg.
Things also should get better for Rome Odunze in his sophomore season. While his 1.18 yards per route run is very concerning, if we’re giving Williams a pass, we have to leave the door open for Odunze to take a huge step forward as well.
Trevor Lawrence and Christian Kirk
I am stopping short of including Brian Thomas Jr. here, even though I think he’s already a top receiver in the league — because of new head coach Liam Coen’s decision to hire Shane Waldron.
If the allegations from Caleb Williams are true, combined with the comments from Jaxon Smith-Njigba ahead of last season, we can confidently say Waldron is one of the worst coaches in NFL history and does not belong anywhere near an NFL team. Yet, here he is having input with the Jaguars.
With that said, Coen played a huge role in turning the Bucs’ offense into a juggernaut.
The 2024 season was Coen’s first in Tampa, Fla. He immediately turned the Bucs’ offense into one of the best in the NFL. They ranked third in PFN’s Offense+ metric, a huge leap from 2023’s 22nd-place ranking.
It’s hard to imagine the Jaguars not improving offensively in 2025. They ranked 18th in PFN’s Offense+ metric in 2024, earning a C- grade. The metric only dates back to 2019, but the Jaguars have never earned a grade higher than C+, which came in 2022 — the only year they finished better than 14th.
Under Coen’s tutelage, Baker Mayfield posted one of the best seasons in team history. He ranked eighth in EPA per play after finishing just 14th in 2023. Mayfield averaged a career-high 22.1 fantasy points per game, finishing as the overall QB4. His previous high was 17.9 points per game in his rookie year.
Trevor Lawrence has never been a consistently good quarterback. He had one of the worst rookie seasons in NFL history. Lawrence’s QB+ rating as a rookie was a D-, but the real story was the overall ranking in the database. Of 223 quarterbacks ranked, Lawrence’s rookie year came in at 198th. It was truly horrific. Of course, he also had arguably the worst head coach in NFL history directing things, which certainly didn’t help.
Lawrence has improved since then, but he’s still never done better than 17.9 points per game. But his 2022 season did earn a C+ grade in QB+, the ninth-best of the year.
While Lawrence is obviously nowhere close to a top quarterback, a turnaround would not be totally unprecedented. We just saw Kevin O’Connell help Sam Darnold put up a top-12 season.
Given how poorly Lawrence has played over the first four years of his career, there’s no chance he’s expensive in 2025 fantasy drafts. It wouldn’t be a total shock if he were this year’s Darnold, emerging from the depths of ADP to post a QB1 season.
Another change Coen made in Tampa was to move Chris Godwin back to the slot, where he lined up 57% of the time. A devastating knee injury ended Godwin’s season after just seven games, but he was averaging a career-high 19.7 points per game at the time.
Early in his career, the Cardinals misused Christian Kirk, operating almost exclusively on the outside. In 2022, he moved to the slot more and had the best season of his career. In 2023, he had a 67% slot rate and another solid 12.5 points per game season. Last year, he was victimized by Thomas’ arrival and the poor quarterback play, but he was still in the slot 77% of the time.
Expect Coen to utilize Kirk heavily in the slot, which could propel the veteran wide receiver to at least high-WR3 status.
Derek Carr and Chris Olave
Now entering his 12th NFL season, Derek Carr has yet to ever finish as a QB1. He’s averaged 17.6 fantasy points per game (ppg) twice and 17.8 ppg once, which represents the closest he’s come.
Kellen Moore’s presence is unlikely to turn Carr into a weekly fantasy starter, but it’s hard to paint this as a negative.
As a younger mind, Moore understands the modern passing game and how to succeed by utilizing pre-snap motion and play-action. The play-action pass is the most effective pass in the NFL. Unfortunately, it’s something the Saints have not utilized enough during Carr’s time with the team.
In 2023, the Saints averaged 5.12 play-action pass attempts per game, 31st in the league. In 2024, that rate improved but only marginally (24th with 7.06 per game). Here is how Moore’s teams have performed utilizing play-action:
- Cowboys (2019-22): 103.5 play-action passer rating
- Chargers (2023): 107.9 play-action passer rating
- Eagles (2024): 116.1 play-action passer rating
The Eagles did only attempt 7.0 play-action passes per game. On the surface, that looks like very few — it was fewer than the Saints. However, the Eagles only threw the ball 448 times all season. New Orleans’ quarterbacks attempted 551 passes. That’s a 26.5% rate vs. a 21.7% rate.
Without a mobile quarterback, the Saints should be in the top half of the league in play-action passes. In 2023, Prescott averaged 9.88 play-action pass attempts per game, second in the league.
Last season, Carr was third in the league in passer rating when throwing out of play-action. He’s good at it. The Saints just didn’t use it enough. Moore should be able to get more out of Carr simply by calling more play-action passes.
The Eagles had two top options at WR in 2024, but in Moore’s two previous years, the WR1 finished the season with more catches than any of his teammates had targets. Chris Olave wasn’t healthy in his third season, but he’s one of seven players all-time to open their career with consecutive campaigns in which they averaged at least 12.5 yards a catch and hauled in 70 passes.
Fantasy Football Losers
Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Offense
It would be unfair to ding this offense too much, as the players are still talented. However, given what Coen did for this offense, it’s hard to see them maintaining the same level of production without him.
The good news is new OC Josh Grizzard was promoted from within. So, he served alongside Coen last season and saw what worked and what didn’t. Nevertheless, losing Coen has to be seen as a negative for the Bucs’ offense as a whole.
Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb
The Cowboys seem to be allergic to innovation. Even when Jerry Jones decides not to go with a retread head coach, he still manages to (likely) get it wrong.
There was absolutely no market for Brian Schottenheimer as a head coach. Jerry didn’t do his due diligence with regard to the top candidates and just went with the guy he knew.
Given that Schottenheimer is a first-time head coach, there is still the chance he ends up being better than expected. However, over the course of his time as an offensive coordinator, he’s never been described as an innovator. He’s kind of just there.
Meanwhile, Mike McCarthy, for all his criticisms, really is a good offensive mind. From 2021-2023, the three years where Dak Prescott was mostly healthy, the Cowboys had a top-five scoring offense. It’s hard to see them achieving similar success with Schottenheimer.