NFL’s 6 first-time offensive play callers in 2026 get advice: ‘Let it rip’

Sean Payton called over a member of the Denver Broncos’ support staff last August and gave him an assignment akin to a modern-day treasure hunt.

The head coach wanted the staffer to track down a box score, one from an obscure preseason game that took place on Aug. 13, 1999, between the Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants. That was the day Payton, then the 36-year-old quarterbacks coach for the Giants, was granted his first opportunity to call plays in an NFL game. Twenty-six years later, with that box score in hand as he prepared to give Broncos QB coach Davis Webb the play-calling reins for a preseason game against the Arizona Cardinals, Payton set a bar for his young assistant.

“I had thrown (together) a couple call sheets — or basically stat sheets — from my first time and highlighted a few things (for Webb),” Payton recalled. “I said, ‘See if you can beat this.’ And he did.”

Webb, while relaying plays to reserve quarterbacks Jarrett Stidham and Sam Ehlinger, directed an offense that piled up 562 yards — or nearly 200 more than the Giants produced in that exhibition piloted by Payton a quarter century earlier. When Payton announced in February that Webb would become Denver’s offensive coordinator and new play caller this upcoming season — marking the first time in two decades as a coach Payton hasn’t held the role himself — the veteran coach cited the impression made by Webb while conducting the offense in that preseason game as part of the decision.

“You get to a point where you’re focused strictly on improving your team any way you can,” Payton said. “I do think he has a gift.”

Webb is one of six NFL assistants who are set to call offensive plays for the first time in 2026. This group also includes the Philadelphia Eagles’ Sean Mannion, Washington Commanders’ David Blough, Carolina Panthers’ Brad Idzik, Baltimore Ravens’ Declan Doyle and Seattle Seahawks’ Brian Fleury. The Super Bowl champion Seahawks turned to Fleury after Klint Kubiak was hired as the Las Vegas Raiders’ head coach, but the other changes were made by teams trying to squeeze more out of their offenses than in 2025. They are betting their new play callers can replicate the experience of Kellen Moore, Kyle Shanahan or Sean McVay, assistants who guided top-tier attacks during their first seasons in a quarterback’s ear. For each of those success stories, though, there are more first-time play callers who struggle to produce during their debut seasons.

In 2025 alone, three teams hired first-time play callers — Kevin Patullo of the Eagles, Tanner Engstrand of the New York Jets and Josh Grizzard of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — only to fire them at season’s end. Those teams’ offensive shortcomings, of course, were not limited to the play callers. Engstrand, for example, took over an offense that had finished no better than 23rd in offensive points scored during any of the previous nine seasons, and he had little to work with at quarterback. Nonetheless, the firings were a reminder that the runway for a play caller to find his rhythm can be unforgiving.

So what gives first-timers the best chance to take flight?

“Obviously, the timing of everything, with the play clock, it happens fast,” said Moore, the current New Orleans Saints head coach who helped the Dallas Cowboys produce the NFL’s top offense in terms of total yardage during his first season calling plays in 2019. “You’ve got a few seconds to make a decision. You’ve got to go.”

One common misconception about play calling, Bengals head coach Zac Taylor said recently, is that it’s a solo endeavor. Numerous assistants are chiming in with suggestions, reminders about personnel or defensive tendencies. All of the first-time offensive play callers this season have had some previous experience as part of the communication chain. Success largely hinges on the information the entire staff has armed him with through weekly game-plan sessions.

“It is a collaborative effort,” McVay said. “Everybody’s on the headset; we’ve got a plan, and ultimately somebody’s got to send it in to the quarterback.”

Still, it’s the play caller’s responsibility to compartmentalize all that dialogue and deliver clear directives to the quarterback quickly enough to give the QB the time he needs on the back end to make adjustments at the line of scrimmage. It’s that aspect of the job a coach can’t truly know how to navigate until he’s actually doing it. Payton likes to say the headset “gets real quiet” when a team finds itself in a disadvantageous down-and-distance situation or as late-game moments intensify.

“The play clock comes around quickly,” said Panthers coach Dave Canales, who was hired into that job following his first season as a play caller with the Buccaneers in 2023. “Knowing after penalties, (in) 25 seconds, you’ve gotta have a play ready while you’re trying to figure out, ‘Is it going to be second-and-15 or third-and-7?’ Or whatever it is, so you have the appropriate play.”

One of Canales’ most important lessons as a play caller came before his first regular-season game as Tampa Bay’s offensive coordinator. The Buccaneers were set to play the Vikings, and that meant Canales would be matching wits with veteran defensive coordinator Brian Flores. Canales’ preparation was exhaustive, dipping back half a decade into Flores’ time as the head coach and defensive play caller for the Miami Dolphins. He came across film of a game against the Los Angeles Rams in which Flores sent a zero blitz at quarterback Jared Goff on an incredible 23 of his 34 dropbacks.

“So I have that in the back of my mind: What if he just keeps calling it?” Canales said. “What are you gonna do next? What are you gonna run next? (Do you) have enough people to block? How are we gonna take advantage of it down the field? Making sure we were prepared for all those scenarios. And then for all his show zero, bluff stuff, and being able to adjust to the spot drops. I had all those things swirling in my mind. I really want to make Todd (Bowles) proud (for) giving me the opportunity. I’m looking around, and I’m going through my sequences and my openers, and he could see that I was just kinda like pacing.”

Bowles helped calm the storm in Canales’ mind with a simple reminder: “Don’t worry about being a certain way. Let it rip. Be yourself. Be aggressive. Look for your moments to knock ‘em dead. I got your back.”

Joe Brady, the first-year head coach of the Buffalo Bills, was hired as the Panthers’ offensive coordinator in 2020, giving him his first opportunity to call plays at the NFL level. He arrived after a year as the passing game coordinator at LSU in 2019, when the team went 15-0 behind eventual No. 1 pick Joe Burrow and a pair of dynamic wide receivers in Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson. There weren’t many buttons Brady and the Tigers’ offensive staff pushed that season that didn’t have explosive results. Brady was convinced he could adapt some of what made LSU hum with the Panthers, but he was dealt a quick lesson in how important it was not to be too attached to his favorite calls on the sheet.

“Every year, there (are) gonna be challenges,” Brady said. “It’s about being as prepared as you can be with what you have. Not feeling like you have to re-create a certain offense that you’ve been a part of. In Carolina, I think I hung on the bad plays a little too long, both in-game and after a game. There’s no perfect game you’re gonna call.”

It can be a fine line between conviction and stubbornness. When Payton became a play caller with the Cowboys in the early 2000s, he would send in most of his instructions to the quarterback while veteran head coach Bill Parcells hovered over his shoulder. Parcells would occasionally deliver a sharp line — or a sharper look — that essentially asked: Is that really your call?

Parcells was trying to ensure that his coordinator was secure in what he was doing. That he believed in his call. But there was also a reminder to see the big picture.

“Bill used to say that all the time, ‘Are you paying attention to how the game’s being played?’” Payton said.

Payton now will be in the Parcells role, a Super Bowl-winning coach with an endless reservoir of experience pushing and prodding a young assistant with clear potential and the edge that comes with it.

“I’m sure there are going to be times where I say, ‘This is what I want to run,’” Payton said. “But there’s trust there. There’s trust with his ability and trust in our relationship.”

Ultimately, the most important place a new play caller has to place trust is in himself. Moore couldn’t miss at the start of his first season as the Cowboys’ play caller in 2019. Dallas scored at least 31 points in each of its first three games, all victories. The Cowboys were averaging nearly 500 yards. Then, a rut. Dallas lost three in a row and averaged only 18.6 points. There was no difference in Moore’s approach, though, on either end of that roller coaster. Opportunities can be fleeting for coaches trying to climb toward the head seat, but Moore was determined not to stray from the process that had led him to the play-calling job in the first place.

“Just like as a player, every week you get more and more comfortable with it,” Moore said. “You go through more and more experiences, both positively and negatively, and you have calls you’re going to love and calls you’re going to want back. That’s going to happen every game, no matter how long you call games. You’re going to have the same feeling after games. It’s about learning from those experiences and growing and preparing yourself for more.”

The Cowboys followed the three-game losing streak by scoring at least 35 points in three of their next four games. They finished the season ranked first in yards per game and fourth in points.

History suggests Year 1 in the play-calling role won’t be Moore-level productive for all six of the new assistants in that role in 2026. All of them are inheriting relatively stable situations at quarterback compared to some of last year’s first-timers, but innumerable factors will impact how each of them fares this season.

One thing Idzik will be able to count on is the support of his head coach. The reassuring words from Bowles before that first game for Canales in 2023 — “I’ve got your back” — have stuck with him. In that Week 1 opener, the Buccaneers and quarterback Baker Mayfield, with Canales in his ear, marched down the field during a two-minute drill to end the first half against Flores’ defense. Late in the drive, Mayfield spotted an inverted coverage that Canales had prepared him for throughout the week. It was that moment “to knock ‘em dead,” and Mayfield hit Mike Evans for a 28-yard touchdown to tie the game just before halftime in an eventual Tampa Bay win.

It was an intoxicating moment for Canales. One that reminded him he was exactly where he was supposed to be. He’s still thankful Bowles gave him the confidence to overcome those first-game, play-calling jitters.

“Here we go, let’s let it rip,” Canales recalled thinking after Bowles’ reassuring words that day at U.S. Bank Stadium. “You’re ready. You don’t know what you don’t know. Whatever we need to fix, we’ll fix it on Monday.”