🔗 Share this article

Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple formula. It frequently acts as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who oversaw the largest turnaround receives the prize. In reality, it sparks an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring excellent leadership or merely the greatest surprise.

But this year's competition is distinctly unique. The list of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning conference champions fading and longtime underperformers improving collectively. In an normal season, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a wild and fun season, he's up against several other elite coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to display his special ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's consistent performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady dose of play-action and a innovative aerial game that springs wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Virtually every decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the level of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a normal year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But this is not a normal season!

The area where Johnson's case runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. But he comes up short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee after his early public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an early hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason setback had the team wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The results are clear. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year case has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still