🔗 Share this article

Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward formula. It frequently functions as a form of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who engineered the most dramatic improvement is handed the prize. However, it creates an annual argument about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or just the most shocking shock.

However the latest race is distinctly different. The pool of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions fading and recent underperformers improving together. In an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this turbulent and fun year, he's up against several other exceptional candidates.

This is how the hypothetical vote could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than going rogue. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to create big plays from broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually each decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the level of expectations he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. But the current is not a typical campaign!

Where Johnson's case comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. But he falls just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has masterminded a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the leadership stuff, which was not a guarantee after his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted newbies. From the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But he has pulled everyone and everything together.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting reliable ones. The coach recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still