Fantasy Football: Expected scheme changes and their impact — Part 1

• Sean Payton set to help the Denver Broncos get back on track: Can Russell Wilson and company benefit from Payton’s offensive system?
• Mike McCarthy set to take over play-calling duties with the Dallas Cowboys: If McCarthy implements his West Coast offense this year, the key beneficiaries will be the Cowboys’ receiving weapons.
• A big shift in Indianapolis: What the Indianapolis Colts offense could look like with Shane Steichen and Anthony Richardson as the new faces of the offense. 

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

The NFL coaching landscape looks different every season and as a result, various schemes and play-calling strategies tend to shift for teams, sometimes dramatically. By taking a deeper look at some of the teams with new offensive play-callers, fantasy managers should get a better understanding of what these new coaches’ tendencies are and what that means for fantasy football.

It’s important to note that coaches and schemes are constantly changing and evolving, so while this piece is meant to highlight differences between coaching tendencies, it is by no means a guarantee that teams won’t switch things up from their norm each season. This is only meant to highlight some of the more likely tendency changes that we could see in 2023 under a new coaching staff.

Editor's note: Not all of the offensive play-caller changes have been noted in Part 1 of this article, as the rest will be covered in Part 2 later this week. Part 2 will cover the Baltimore Ravens, Washington Commanders, New York Jets, New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams.

Denver Broncos — Sean Payton, new head coach

Looking at some of the biggest differences between Sean Payton's last couple seasons as an offensive play caller versus what the Broncos’ tendencies were under last year’s coaching staff:

The first, and probably the biggest thing, that stands out from Sean Payton’s offense in comparison to the Broncos’ tendencies last season was the greater focus on the run game. A 7% increase in run rate would add around 100 extra carry attempts in the Broncos offense this coming season compared to last, which favors the team’s RB1 even more under Payton, as his running back deployment leans heavily into one top back getting the bulk of the carries on a weekly basis.

Javonte Williams, assuming he’s healthy, figures to be the biggest beneficiary of Payton’s offense as his opportunity to touch the ball figures to be among the best in the league. This includes a much higher rate of rushing opportunities within the red zone, as noted in the chart above, and in short-yardage situations where Payton also showed more tendency to run the ball than Denver in 2022.

Part of the reasoning behind these differences could be due to Payton having Alvin Kamara as his top running back option, whereas Denver had to rely on Latavius Murray and Melvin Gordon for most of last season, but even when Javonte Williams was in the lineup, the run rates remained low for the Broncos.

The one other area where fantasy managers should expect to see a shift in this Denver offense is its deep passing rate. The Broncos led the NFL in deep pass attempts last season (91), which was almost as many attempts as Sean Payton’s New Orleans Saints drummed up over his last two seasons with the team (98). The key here will be to allow Russell Wilson more high-percentage passing attempts as he gets back to focus on the short and intermediate areas of the field, where Courtland Sutton became the primary focus in the offense last season. 

Sutton led the team in target rate (32.9%) on throws between one and 19 yards down field, which also led to the best receiving grade on the team (78.8) and receiving yards (640) on those throws. Jerry Jeudy, who led the team on throws of 20 or more air yards/deep target rate (42.6%) could potentially end up with a smaller role in this offense than last year, which also could explain some of the trade rumors this offseason.

Carolina Panthers — Frank Reich, new head coach