🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward formula. It often acts as a type of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a direct line: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence wins the award. In practice, it creates an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're actually honoring superior coaching or simply the greatest upset.

However the latest race is profoundly different. The list of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners declining and recent underperformers rising together. During an ordinary year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a wild and fun year, he's facing five other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his otherworldly talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has capitalized. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to create magic from broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. 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 breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical season, he would be the runaway favorite. But the current is not a normal year!

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term success. However Johnson comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching blend of youth and experience, he trusted newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback had the team wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in October. Instead, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still