🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple pattern. It frequently serves as a type of apology. Sorry we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic resurgence is handed the prize. In reality, it sparks an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or just the biggest upset.

But the current field is profoundly different. The pool of nominees is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been messy, with recent division winners declining and longtime also-rans rising together. During an normal season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's facing multiple other elite coaches.

This is how the hypothetical vote could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been capable to create magic from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually each decision – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the organization with the level of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a ordinary year, he would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet the current is not a typical year!

Where his case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time leader who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the off-field aspects, which was not a certainty after his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason setback had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are evident. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still