🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often acts as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the biggest improvement wins the prize. In reality, it sparks an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or just the most shocking surprise.

Yet this year's field is fundamentally different. The group of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division winners falling away and recent strugglers rising together. Under an ordinary year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a wild and entertaining year, he's facing several other outstanding coaches.

Below is how the projected vote ought to be structured.

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

Coach of the Year voters love QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent excellence. Under Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than freelancing. It is an attack built entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets consistently. The QB has thrived. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to conjure magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost each decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the organization with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a normal season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current isn't a typical campaign!

The area where his case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But he comes up short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has masterminded a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the off-field aspects, which wasn't a given after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on newbies. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring everyone and all elements into sync.

After an early strong start, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Each Strong of the Year argument has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still