🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a simple pattern. It often acts as a form of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic turnaround is handed the prize. However, it fuels an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or simply the most shocking shock.

But the latest competition is distinctly different. The pool of contenders is exceptionally strong. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning conference winners fading and longtime strugglers rising in unison. During an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. But in this chaotic and thrilling year, he's competing with five other elite coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to spin big plays from nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a normal season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. But the current is not a normal season!

Where his case runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. However Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet he has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an early hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason setback had the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year case has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him just one place ahead of peers.

Still