How The Unusual Season Shattered the Conventional Coach of the Year Mold.
Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our preseason predictions.
In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who oversaw the largest improvement receives the award. In practice, it sparks an annual argument about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or simply the most shocking shock.
Yet the current competition is fundamentally unique. The group of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division winners declining and recent underperformers improving collectively. Under an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this chaotic and fun year, he's competing with five other exceptional candidates.
This is how the hypothetical vote ought to look.
5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record
Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.
Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been able to conjure big plays from nothing.
The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a rhythm passer – has worked. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the organization with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.
During a normal year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But this is not a typical season!
The area where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for sustained winning. But Johnson comes up short here.
4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record
The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.
What's more notably, he has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.
The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching blend of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.
Following an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.
The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.
3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3
Every Strong of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.
Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him only one spot ahead of peers.
Still
