🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple script. It commonly functions as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who oversaw the largest turnaround is handed the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or just the biggest upset.

But this year's competition is profoundly unique. The pool of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been messy, with recent division champions declining and recent also-rans rising together. Under an typical season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and entertaining year, he's facing multiple other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the projected vote ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a steady dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to create big plays from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

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

The area where his case comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. However Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which was not a given following his early public appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, he hired newbies. From the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an early hot start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year case has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the season in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still