How This Unusual Campaign Shattered the Traditional Coach of the Year Mold.
Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It commonly acts as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our preseason forecasts.
In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who engineered the largest resurgence is handed the prize. In practice, it creates an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior leadership or just the biggest surprise.
But the latest race is profoundly unique. The group of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning conference champions declining and recent underperformers improving together. Under an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in this chaotic and thrilling season, he's facing five other elite candidates.
This is how the ideal ballot ought to be structured.
5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5
Voters for Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.
The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained excellence. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been able to create big plays out of broken plays.
Johnson arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the building with the level of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.
During a ordinary season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet this is not a typical season!
Where his case comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for long-term success. But Johnson falls short here.
4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4
The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.
What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial public appearances and some of his preseason moves.
Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.
After an initial hot start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse had the team wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.
The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the standings 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, 13-3
Every Coach of the Year case has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.
Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of peers.
Still
