🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward script. It often functions as a type of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who orchestrated the largest resurgence wins the award. However, it sparks an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or merely the greatest surprise.

However the current race is distinctly unique. The group of candidates is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division champions falling away and longtime strugglers ascending together. Under an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining year, he's facing multiple other outstanding candidates.

This is how the ideal vote could shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to display his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an attack built solely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to create magic from nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the building with the level of hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a ordinary year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. But the current isn't a typical campaign!

Where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained success. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, he has mastered the off-field aspects, which wasn't a certainty after his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen hired first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an early hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year argument has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the season in October. Rather, it made it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still