How This Strange Campaign Redefined the Conventional Coach of the Year Mould.
Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward formula. It frequently serves as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our preseason forecasts.
In theory, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic turnaround wins the award. In practice, it sparks an annual debate about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or simply the greatest upset.
But the current competition is profoundly unique. The group of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division winners fading and longtime also-rans improving in unison. During an normal year, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this chaotic and entertaining season, he's facing several other exceptional candidates.
Below is how the projected vote ought to be structured.
5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5
Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.
The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to display his otherworldly ability. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent excellence. Under his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to conjure magic out of nothing.
Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the building with the immense pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.
In a normal season, he would be the runaway choice. Yet this is not a normal year!
The area where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for long-term success. However Johnson comes up just short here.
4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record
The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.
What's more impressively, Coen has nailed the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee after his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.
Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff blend of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. From the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.
Following an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.
The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.
3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record
Every Coach of the Year argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.
Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has fallen away after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.
Still