🔗 Share this article

Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward formula. It frequently serves as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your franchise in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic improvement wins the prize. In reality, it fuels an annual debate about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or merely the biggest surprise.

Yet the current field is profoundly unique. The pool of candidates is exceptionally deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with recent division winners fading and recent also-rans ascending in unison. Under an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining year, he's facing multiple other outstanding coaches.

This is how the ideal vote could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters love QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his otherworldly ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than going rogue. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a creative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been available, he's been able to spin big plays from nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Almost each decision – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the immense expectations he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet this is not a normal season!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term winning. But Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the off-field aspects, which was not a given after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed after that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still