🔗 Share this article

Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward formula. It frequently acts as a form of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence wins the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent leadership or just the biggest shock.

Yet the latest competition is profoundly different. The group of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division champions falling away and longtime strugglers rising in unison. During an normal season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this wild and fun year, he's facing several other elite candidates.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot should look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters love signal-callers. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to display his rare talent. From Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's consistent performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme instead of going rogue. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide-open targets everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to create big plays from nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually each decision – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the immense hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a typical year, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet the current is not a typical campaign!

Where his case comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But he comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has excelled at the leadership aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach recentered the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still