🔗 Share this article

Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It commonly acts as a type of apology. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who oversaw the biggest improvement wins the award. In practice, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or simply the greatest surprise.

Yet this year's field is profoundly different. The pool of nominees is remarkably talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division champions declining and longtime also-rans improving collectively. In an ordinary year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in this chaotic and thrilling season, he's competing with several other exceptional candidates.

This is how the projected ballot could be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to create magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost each bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the building with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

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

Where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has masterminded a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the off-field aspects, which wasn't a certainty after his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, Coen bet on newbies. From the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year argument has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still