The Way The Unusual Season Broke the Conventional Coach of the Year Mold.
Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward formula. It commonly functions as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our preseason forecasts.
In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence receives the award. In reality, it creates an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or merely the most shocking upset.
However this year's race is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with reigning division winners falling away and recent also-rans ascending in unison. In an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in this wild and fun season, he's facing multiple other outstanding candidates.
This is how the projected ballot ought to be structured.
5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5
Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.
The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to conjure big plays from nothing.
Johnson came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the immense expectations he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – 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 ordinary season, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But the current isn't a typical season!
Where his case runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But Johnson comes up short in this ranking.
4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record
Coen is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.
What's more notably, he has mastered the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee after his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.
The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching mix of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements into sync.
After an initial strong beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.
The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.
3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3
Each Strong of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.
Moving on from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.
Still
