🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward pattern. It frequently serves as a kind of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the skipper who orchestrated the largest improvement receives the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or just the most shocking upset.

But the current field is profoundly different. The list of nominees is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference winners falling away and recent also-rans improving collectively. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's up against several other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot could shake out.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained dominance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than going rogue. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a ordinary season, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet this is not a typical campaign!

Where his case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up just short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a rapid resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the off-field aspects, which was not a given after his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff blend of new ideas and experience, he hired newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet he has pulled everyone and all elements together.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking reliable ones. The coach recentered the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still