The Way This Bizarre Campaign Shattered the Traditional Coach of the Year Mold.
Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It often acts as a kind of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our preseason forecasts.
In theory, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic turnaround is handed the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior coaching or simply the biggest upset.
But the latest race is distinctly different. The pool of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been messy, with recent division winners declining and longtime also-rans improving together. Under an ordinary year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this wild and thrilling year, he's facing multiple other exceptional candidates.
This is how the ideal ballot should shake out.
5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5
Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way home.
The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a creative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to create big plays from broken plays.
Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually every decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.
In a ordinary year, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. But the current isn't a typical campaign!
The area where his candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for long-term success. But he comes up just short in this ranking.
4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4
Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.
Even more impressively, he has mastered the leadership aspects, which was not a given following his early public appearances and some of his preseason moves.
Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he bet on newbies. From the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. But he has pulled the entire group and everything together.
After an early hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the team wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.
The results are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.
3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record
Every Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.
Moving on from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the season in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him just one spot ahead of peers.
Still
