🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward formula. It commonly functions as a type of apology. We regret we got wrong your team in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic turnaround wins the award. However, it fuels an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or simply the greatest shock.

But this year's field is profoundly different. The list of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent division winners declining and recent underperformers rising collectively. Under an normal year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in this wild and fun season, he's facing multiple other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent dominance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a creative aerial game that springs wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to spin magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually each bet – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet this isn't a normal season!

Where Johnson's case comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained success. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the leadership stuff, which was not a certainty following his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and experience, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team stumbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

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

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still