🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple pattern. It often serves as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the largest improvement is handed the prize. However, it fuels an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or just the most shocking shock.

But the latest field is profoundly different. The list of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division winners falling away and recent strugglers ascending collectively. Under an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and thrilling season, he's up against five other outstanding candidates.

This is how the projected vote ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right system, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his special ability. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action and a innovative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to spin big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a ordinary season, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this isn't a normal year!

Where his candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained success. But Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the leadership aspects, which wasn't a certainty after his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff blend of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an early strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still