Early in the 2024 NFL season, there’s still not a whole lot that we know for sure. It’s important to remember that there is still more than 75% of the year left to play. But we can still take stock of what we’ve seen so far, and try to figure out who is doing things that are working on both sides of the ball.
That’s why we’re here today. We want to take a look at the best offensive and defensive play-calling duos in the league. We’re doing “play-calling duos” rather than coordinators because, well, so many head coaches call the plays on their side of the ball these days; and if we didn’t include them, we would really be narrowing down the field of available options.
We decided to break down the top 10 into three groups, and the teams in each group are listed alphabetically.
Shanahan-McVay tree offenses (with defensive questions)
49ers: HC Kyle Shanahan (OC Chris Foerster), DC Nick SorensenPackers: HC Matt LaFleur (OC Adam Stenavich), DC Jeff Hafley
Rams: HC Sean McVay (OC Mike LaFleur), DC Chris Shula
These teams have had their coaching staffs picked over the past several years — especially San Francisco and L.A. But Shanahan, LaFleur and McVay are three of the very best offensive play-callers in the NFL, so good that they would be on this list almost no matter who their teams had as the defensive coordinator. Each of these three teams has new defensive coordinators this season, and they are off to varying degrees of good starts.
San Francisco has generally done well with developing defensive coordinators in-house (Robert Saleh, DeMeco Ryans), while McVay’s choices on that side of the ball have worked out quite well, too. (Wade Phillips, Brandon Staley, Raheem Morris.) LaFleur has yet to get it truly right on defense, and we’ll see how things go with Hafley through the rest of the year. (The early-season numbers are propped up a bit by having played Will Levis.)
