How The Strange Season Shattered the Typical Coach of the Year Mold.
Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward formula. It commonly functions as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign projections.
In theory, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the most dramatic turnaround receives the prize. However, it creates an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or simply the biggest shock.
Yet the current race is distinctly unique. The list of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent division champions fading and recent strugglers ascending in unison. In an typical season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in such a chaotic and thrilling season, he's competing with multiple other elite candidates.
This is how the ideal vote ought to shake out.
5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5
Coach of the Year voters love QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.
Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been given the opportunity to display his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack built solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a innovative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when openings haven't been available, he's been able to spin big plays from nothing.
Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually every decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.
During a typical year, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current is not a typical campaign!
The area where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are famously fickle. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up short here.
4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4
The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.
What's more impressively, he has excelled at the leadership stuff, which wasn't a given following his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.
Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff blend of new ideas and experience, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.
After an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.
The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.
3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record
Every Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.
Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the season in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.
Still