🔗 Share this article

Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward formula. It frequently acts as a kind of apology. We regret we got wrong your franchise in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the biggest improvement wins the award. However, it fuels an annual argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent coaching or merely the most shocking shock.

Yet this year's race is fundamentally different. The group of candidates is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division champions fading and longtime underperformers rising together. Under an ordinary season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this wild and entertaining season, he's facing multiple other outstanding coaches.

Below is how the ideal vote should look.

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

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide-open targets everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been able to spin big plays out of nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

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

The area where his case comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has masterminded a rapid turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has nailed the off-field aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he hired first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the season would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed after that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of peers.

Still