How This Unusual Season Broke the Typical NFL Coach of the Year Formula.
Usually, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward formula. It frequently acts as a form of apology. We regret we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.
Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence wins the prize. However, it sparks an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or simply the greatest upset.
Yet this year's competition is profoundly unique. The group of candidates is remarkably strong. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners fading and recent underperformers improving collectively. In an normal season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this chaotic and entertaining season, he's competing with several other elite coaches.
Below is how the projected ballot should shake out.
5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record
Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.
The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent performance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an offense built solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open targets everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to spin magic from nothing.
Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Almost each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.
During a normal season, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But this isn't a typical season!
The area where Johnson's case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term success. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.
4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4
Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.
What's more impressively, he has mastered the leadership aspects, which wasn't a certainty following his initial public appearances and some of his preseason moves.
The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.
After an early hot start, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.
The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.
3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3
Every Strong of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.
Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.
Still
