🔗 Share this article

Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often functions as a form of apology. Sorry we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the largest turnaround wins the award. In reality, it sparks an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent coaching or just the biggest surprise.

However the latest competition is fundamentally different. The group of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference winners falling away and longtime underperformers rising together. In an normal season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's competing with five other elite coaches.

Here is how the ideal vote ought to shake out.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers consistently. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been able to create magic out of nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – 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 franchise.

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

The area where his case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the off-field aspects, which wasn't a guarantee after his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But he has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed after that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still