🔗 Share this article

Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward script. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who engineered the largest resurgence is handed the award. In reality, it sparks an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or just the greatest shock.

However the latest race is profoundly unique. The pool of nominees is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been messy, with recent conference winners declining and longtime strugglers rising together. Under an typical season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's up against multiple other elite coaches.

Below is how the ideal ballot ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his rare ability. From Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system rather than improvising. It is an offense built solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open targets consistently. Williams has thrived. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a typical season, he would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet the current is not a typical season!

Where his candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained success. However Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles stuff, which was not a certainty after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff blend of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on first-timers. From the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial strong start, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still