🔗 Share this article

Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It commonly serves as a kind of apology. Sorry we misjudged your franchise in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the largest turnaround is handed the award. In reality, it sparks an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or merely the greatest surprise.

But the current race is fundamentally unique. The list of nominees is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning division winners declining and recent strugglers improving together. During an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling season, he's competing with multiple other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the ideal vote should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his otherworldly talent. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged dominance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a steady dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that springs wide-open targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to spin big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost each decision – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the level of expectations he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

In a ordinary year, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. But this isn't a normal season!

Where his case comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. However he falls short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a rapid resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which was not a guarantee after his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. From the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still