Brennan O’Neill’s evolution into the Outlaws’ quarterback

Brennan O’Neill’s offensive game is as well-known as any player’s in the league. A powerful shooter who sweeps over the top or attacks down the alley, he’s as good a...

Brennan O’Neill’s offensive game is as well-known as any player’s in the league. A powerful shooter who sweeps over the top or attacks down the alley, he’s as good a dodge-to-shoot player as there is in the world, and his ability to score from any angle is unmatched. But through the first half of this season, O’Neill has broken the script.

The fourth-year superstar is undergoing an offensive metamorphosis and cementing himself not as the world’s best scorer, but as one of its best playmakers. The numbers are undeniable. In each of his first two seasons, O’Neill ended the year with eight assists.

Through five games in 2026, he’s already at 10. He’s one of six players in the league with double-digit assists and the Outlaws’ leading playmaker through the first half of the season. The underlying stats back up the production, as well.

He ranks fifth in the league in assist opportunities (25) and has the fourth-best assist rate – percentage of touches that result in an assist – among players with at least 200 touches (4.69%). This is a radical shift in O’Neill’s usage. His assist rate a season ago ranked 24th among players with at least 200 touches (2.19%).

Through the first half of the season, he’s more than doubled that mark. O’Neill’s playmaking hasn’t come at the expense of shooting opportunities, where his shot rate has only dropped marginally even as his shooting form has slumped. He’s still firing away as much as ever, but when he makes the killer pass, he’s been more incisive and effective.

Scoring gravity is a real thing, and it shifts how defenses approach an attack unit. A player like O’Neill has so much scoring gravity that the whole defense shifts when the ball is in his stick. Throughout his PLL career, O’Neill has been able to weaponize that as a playmaker.

The quintessential Brennan O’Neill assist is pressing up the lefty wing and ripping a skip pass to the backside. When he is clicking, he is hitting these passes with regularity. His ability to take over a game as a scorer can be so overwhelming that most defenses will hedge a little bit anytime he has the ball.

And when skip lanes open, O’Neill attacks. This playmaking ability from the high lefty wing has been vital for Denver, especially as it missed Pat Kavanagh early in the year. The former Notre Dame star was the undisputed quarterback of the Outlaws offense a season ago with a team-high 16 assists.

There is no true replacement for that on Denver’s roster, but O’Neill replicated that production in his own way. He became the primary ball mover and chance creator, easing the playmaking burden off of a dodge-to-shoot player like Jared Bernhardt or a pure finisher like Logan Wisnauskas. Now that Kavanagh’s back to 100% on the righty side, the Outlaws have a true two-quarterback system.

Both he and O’Neill are complete attackmen on their respective wings, capable of beating any matchup in the league and creating for themselves and others. That allows the likes of Wisnauskas, Bernhardt and Dalton Young to thrive in space as finishers and tertiary dodgers. The offensive architecture flows together, with all of the pieces complementing the strengths of one another.

It’s those complementary pieces that have allowed O’Neill to race up the assist charts. He is seeing the field well and looking to create opportunities, and his playmaking is a byproduct of an offense that fits together. Wisnauskas is the best example of this.

Two years removed from an injury and after a season to work out the kinks with all of the star power on the Denver offense, Wisnauskas has reasserted himself among the elite off-ball attackmen in the league. Last weekend, it was Young who was the perfect fit inside the O’Neill-Kavanagh duopoly. He scored a career-high four goals, mostly floating in the middle of the field and benefiting from the holes created by O’Neill’s scoring gravity.

O’Neill’s ceiling as a player is always going to be defined by his dodging and scoring ability. When he can get on a roll with the ball in his stick, that’s when he can be the best player in the world. But his shooting slump hasn’t allowed him to be that player much this season.

The exciting thing for Denver is the evolution of his floor. By becoming more of a playmaker, O’Neill can always find ways to contribute and impact the game. As the Outlaws begin the second half of their season – starting Saturday against the Carolina Chaos (2 p.m. ET; ABC) – they’ll hope their new QB1 can continue the ascent to an MVP finish.