🔗 Share this article

Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It often functions as a type of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic turnaround wins the prize. However, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring superior leadership or merely the greatest upset.

However this year's competition is profoundly unique. The group of nominees is remarkably strong. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division winners falling away and longtime strugglers rising collectively. During an ordinary season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in this wild and thrilling year, he's competing with multiple other outstanding coaches.

This is how the hypothetical vote should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his special talent. From midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than going rogue. It is an attack built solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to spin big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Almost every decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this is not a typical season!

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained winning. However he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given following his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and experience, he hired first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. But he has pulled everyone and everything together.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A midseason collapse caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The results are clear. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still