NFL Free Agency: 5 best scheme fits on offense include Malik Willis, Kenneth Walker

You can say all sorts of things about any massive free-agency spending spree in any sport, but the one thing we do know is that the NFL teams poised to be the most successful when handing out all that money are the ones who understand schematic fit for their new players at a higher degree than the average.

Sounds obvious, right? Well, it may be, but the streets are littered with free-agency failures in which teams became overly excited about a player’s athletic potential without really thinking about how said player fits into what their coaches want to do.

When it works, players can be force multipliers and championship charters for their new teams. When it doesn’t… well, that’s when you start worrying about dead cap in a contract a lot sooner than you should.

Now that a high rate of the biggest deals in free agency have been struck (unofficially, of course — these deals aren’t real until the start of the new league year on Wednesday, March 11 at 4:00 p.m. EST), here are five of the best schematic fits on offense — the deals that have among the best chances of working out, because coaches and executives actually got together beforehand and thought about player and scheme fit.

What a revolutionary concept!

Malik Willis, QB, Miami Dolphins

The Dolphins were smart to sign Willis to a three-year, $67.5 million contract with $45 million guaranteed after releasing Tua Tagovailoa and entering the dead cap hell that will entail — which is only a part of their overall dead cap hell.

Get ready to hear the word “rebuilding” a lot in Miami, folks.

Willis’ AAV of $22.5 million is wayyyyyy down on the quarterback spectrum, which is an appropriate thing for a guy who has shown a great deal of growth and development as a player, but with an achingly small sample size. With the Green Bay Packers last season, Willis completed 30 of 35 passes for 422 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 145.5. He also ran the ball 22 times for 123 yards and two touchdowns.

New head coach Jeff Hafley and new general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan both come from the Packers organization, so they’ve seen much more of Willis over the last two years than we have. Based on the tape we have seen, their confidence in Willis is well-placed. But you still need the right system for any quarterback to succeed. Offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik has a mixed-bag reputation from his two seasons (2023-2024) as the Houston Texans’ offensive coordinator. It all worked brilliantly in ‘23 when C.J. Stroud was a rookie and had a functional offensive line, and then things went all kinds of south the next time around.

As Slowik is a Kyle Shanahan acolyte from way back, you can expect multiple different personnel packages and run schemes, and you can also expect the Dolphins to get their new quarterback out on the move. In 2023, the Texans had the most dropbacks (138) and passing attempts (121) outside the pocket, whether it was a designed rollout or reaction to pressure, and the results were quite good — 55 completions for 712 yards, 547 air yards, eight touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 91.9.

Willis can be a game-changer as a pure runner, but let’s not underestimate his ability to win in the pocket. That’s not a problem. That said, we can also expect Slowik to take the most and best advantage of Willis’ movement skills. The tape shows exactly why that could be a very dangerous thing in a positive sense.

Kenneth Walker III, RB, Kansas City Chiefs

Larry Brown, Desmond Howard, Dexter Jackson, Kenneth Walker III.

Those are the four Super Bowl MVPs who moved to new teams the next season, and the hit rate so far is 0-for-3. The Kansas City Chiefs will hope to buck that trend after signing Walker, the former Seattle Seahawks running back, to a three-year, $43.050 million contract with $28.7 million guaranteed.

This move, and the return of Eric Bieniemy as the team’s offensive coordinator, will hopefully put an end to the Chiefs’ recent predilection for running a “cute” offense with very few sustaining characteristics. It’s all well and good to put the onus on your alien quarterback to make unfathomable plays, but if that’s all you’ve got, the bust rate will kill you in the end.

The Chiefs have experimented with a lot of different run schemes over the last few seasons, but when Bieniemy was last in charge of the offense, there was a heaping helping of outside zone and stretch plays to test the horizontal limits of a defense.

Well, last season for the Seahawks, Walker had the NFL’s seventh-most carries (105) in outside zone and stretch for 547 yards, 311 yards after contact, 5.2 yards per carry, three touchdowns, and an EPA of +10.51, fourth-highest in the NFL among backs with at least 50 carries in those concepts behind D’Andre Swift, Kyren Williams, and Bijan Robinson.

The Chiefs probably didn’t need to bone up on all those fancy metrics — they just had to re-watch their 24-10 loss to Seattle in Walker’s rookie season of 2022, when he gained 107 yards on 26 carries, and bombed their defense with outside zone over and over again.

Maybe that’s enough to break the Super Bowl MVP curse!

Mike Evans, WR, San Francisco 49ers

The 2025 San Francisco 49ers had an interesting receiver situation in that they gave Brandon Aiyuk a four-year, $140 million contract with $45 million in 2024, only to have him not want to play with the team… well, at all in 2025. Now that GM John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan have moved on from all that, there’s other work to be done at the position, and the 49ers took a decisive step on Monday with the three-year, $42 million contract with $16.3 million given to former Tampa Bay Buccaneer (and likely future Hall of Famer) Mike Evans.

2025 saw the end of Evans’ amazing streak of 11 straight 1,000-yard seasons, but it wasn’t because he had lost his fastball — a broken collarbone limited him to eight games, 30 catches, 59 targets, 368 yards, and three touchdowns.

Where the Evans-49ers schematic fit really works is in Evans’ ability and willingness to make tough catches over the middle of the field. Because no team utilizes the middle of the field in the passing game more. In 2025, the duo of Brock Purdy and Mac Jones led the league on dropbacks for passes charted over the middle of the field with 96, completing a league-high 68 of those attempts for a league-high 884 yards, a league-high 537 air yards, and six touchdowns to five interceptions.

San Francisco’s passer rating of 98.6 on such throws tells you that a higher efficiency rate is needed to match that volume, and when you watch Evans take defenses apart last season on slants, posts, and digs — anything where the receiver has to win over the middle — it’s easy to see why the 49ers jumped all over this opportunity. Evans will turn 33 on August 21, and he’s not the speed merchant he used to be, but he’s still 6’5” and 231 pounds, and he should fit the Shanahan passing game like the proverbial hand in glove.

Wan’Dale Robinson, WR, Tennessee Titans

This is less of a schematic point than a metric one, but it still bears some definition. The Titans spent big on the first day of the official tampering period, and the most consequential deal was given to former New York Giants receiver Wan’Dale Robinson on a four-year, $70 million deal with $38 million guaranteed. If you’re unfamiliar with Robinson’s game, and assume by his 5’8”, 185-pound frame that he’s just a gadget guy, and you’re wondering why Tennessee rolled out the big bucks for said gadget guy, there’s more to Robinson’s game than you way think.

Over the last two seasons, the Giants understood exactly how valuable Robinson could be on third down. In 2024, he was the NFL’s most-targeted receiver on third down with 53, and last season, he ranked sixth with 46 such targets. Robinson caught 25 of those passes for 302 yards and 14 third-down conversions.

Why is this important? Because last season, the Titans had a first-down conversion rate of 27.4% in the passing game (156 first downs in 570 passing attempts), which was the NFL’s second-worst, ahead of only the Cleveland Browns’ 24.0%. Whenever you’re in Browns territory on offense, you need to make a change. Several, in fact.

New Titans offensive coordinator Brian Daboll was the Giants’ head coach as Robinson became this unlikely third down element, so it’s easy to see why Robinson also landed in Tennessee, and the hidden reason for the move. The not-so-hidden reason for the move is that Robinson has a real knack for getting open to all areas of the field, and Cam Ward could certainly use some more of that.

Tyler Linderbaum, Center, Las Vegas Raiders

Remember all that stuff we said about Kenneth Walker III and outside zone? Well, the guy dialing it up last season, former Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, is now of course the Las Vegas Raiders’ head coach. So, when the Raiders re-set the center market forevermore by giving former Baltimore Raven Tyler Linderbaum a three-year, $81 million with $60 million fully guaranteed and the entire contract guaranteed if he’s on the roster next year, you would assume that when blocking outside zone, Linderbaum was a superhero.

You would be correct. Overall last season, the Ravens had 138 rushing attempts out of outside zone and stretch plays for 677 yards, 475 yards after contact, 4.9 yards per carry, and three touchdowns. And when you watch Linderbaum block those runs, you’re watching Mozart the way it should be played. Linderbaum can cockroach bigger nose tackles at the line of scrimmage, he can stretch his blocks to go bowling on the move, and he can hit the second level with accuracy and evil intentions.

Linderbaum is a great overall center — he’ll be a massive upgrade for the Raiders in pass-blocking and any other run scheme they care to execute — but this particular schematic fit is just too good not to highlight.