🔗 Share this article

Usually, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple script. It commonly acts as a form of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who oversaw the biggest resurgence receives the award. In practice, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or merely the biggest upset.

But the latest race is profoundly unique. The pool of nominees is remarkably strong. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning division champions falling away and longtime underperformers rising together. During an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling year, he's facing multiple other elite coaches.

Here is how the ideal vote should be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's prolonged performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers consistently. Williams has thrived. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to create big plays out of nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet the current isn't a typical season!

The area where Johnson's case runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up just short here.

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

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time leader who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which was not a guarantee following his initial public appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching blend of new ideas and experience, he trusted newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. He receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has regressed since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still