HC Background and Offensive Tendencies

I started this study with the hypothesis that head coaches with a background as defensive assistants are more likely to run the ball than those who came up on the offensive side of things.  A prime example in support of this idea was last year’s Seattle offense under Mike Macdonald, which ran the ball on 50% of its plays (the league average was 44%) on the way to winning the Super Bowl. And in the 32-team NFL era, since 2002, teams with (what I’ll call) defensive head coaches have run on an average of 43.6% of their plays compared with a 42.2% rushing rate by “offensive HCs.”  So it seems pretty open-and-shut that you should go out and draft pieces of Macdonald’s running game and especially target Ravens’ and Titans’ RBs (new defensive HCs Jesse Minter and Robert Saleh, respectively).  Conversely, you’d want the passing games on teams with HCs having an offensive background. Of course, if it were that simple, I’d be about done with this article…

Mike Horn

May 27, 2026

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