🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward pattern. It often acts as a form of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic resurgence wins the award. In practice, it fuels an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or simply the greatest surprise.

But the current field is fundamentally different. The list of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent division winners fading and longtime underperformers improving collectively. Under an ordinary year, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining year, he's competing with five other elite coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been given the opportunity to display his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a innovative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to create big plays from nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost every gamble – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the building with the level of hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

In a typical season, he would be the clear-cut choice. But this is not a typical year!

Where his case comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for long-term success. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit 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 was not a guarantee after his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements into sync.

Following an early hot start, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. He receives the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has cooled off after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still