🔗 Share this article

Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple script. It commonly acts as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who engineered the largest improvement receives the award. However, it fuels an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or merely the most shocking surprise.

But this year's competition is distinctly different. The list of contenders is exceptionally strong. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions falling away and recent strugglers ascending in unison. In an typical year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. But in this wild and thrilling year, he's competing with several other elite coaches.

Below is how the projected ballot ought to look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his special ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent excellence. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than freelancing. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers consistently. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to spin magic from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a typical season, he would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet this isn't a typical year!

Where Johnson's case comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for sustained success. But he falls just short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks 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 defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his initial public appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and experience, he trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial strong start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed since that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still