🔗 Share this article

Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently serves as a type of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence receives the prize. In reality, it sparks an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or simply the greatest surprise.

But the latest competition is distinctly unique. The group of candidates is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners fading and longtime strugglers rising in unison. Under an ordinary year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in such a chaotic and entertaining year, he's up against several other outstanding candidates.

This is how the projected vote could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his rare ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained excellence. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been capable to create big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a normal year, he would be the clear-cut choice. But this is not a typical season!

The area where Johnson's case comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained success. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the leadership aspects, which was not a given following his early public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching mix of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted newbies. From the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

Each Strong of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of peers.

Still