🔗 Share this article

Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a form of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your team in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic improvement wins the award. However, it sparks an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or merely the most shocking surprise.

Yet the current race is profoundly unique. The list of candidates is remarkably strong. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning conference winners fading and longtime underperformers improving collectively. In an typical year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this turbulent and fun season, he's facing several other outstanding coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right system, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare ability. From Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to create magic out of broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the immense pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet this is not a typical year!

The area where his case runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for long-term success. However Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the leadership stuff, which wasn't a given following his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. From the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and all elements together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the team wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. He gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year argument has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still