🔗 Share this article

Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It often acts as a type of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic turnaround receives the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or simply the biggest surprise.

But the current competition is fundamentally different. The pool of nominees is remarkably strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners fading and longtime underperformers rising together. In an ordinary season, a coach leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this chaotic and entertaining year, he's competing with several other exceptional coaches.

This is how the ideal vote ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an attack built solely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that creates wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure magic from nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the organization with the immense hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. But this isn't a normal season!

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the off-field stuff, which wasn't a given after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. From the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. But Coen has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year setback caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year case has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only one place ahead of peers.

Still