🔗 Share this article

Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple script. It commonly serves as a kind of apology. Sorry we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic turnaround wins the prize. In practice, it fuels an annual argument about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or just the greatest surprise.

But the current competition is distinctly unique. The pool of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions falling away and recent also-rans improving together. During an typical year, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this chaotic and fun year, he's up against multiple other exceptional candidates.

This is how the ideal vote ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right system, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his rare ability. From Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that frees wide-open targets everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been capable to spin magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost each decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's 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 pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a ordinary season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. But the current is not a typical year!

The area where his candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term success. But he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has nailed the off-field aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his early public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an initial hot start, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback caused the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still