How This Strange Campaign Broke the Typical Coach of the Year Formula.
Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward pattern. It commonly acts as a form of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your franchise in our preseason predictions.
On paper, it's a direct line: the skipper who engineered the biggest improvement is handed the prize. In reality, it creates an annual argument about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding excellent leadership or just the most shocking shock.
Yet the latest race is distinctly different. The group of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning division champions declining and longtime underperformers improving in unison. In an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in this chaotic and fun year, he's competing with five other exceptional coaches.
This is how the hypothetical ballot ought to look.
5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5
Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.
The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his special ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings weren't there, he's been capable to create big plays out of broken plays.
The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Almost every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.
In a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. But this is not a normal year!
Where his case runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. However Johnson falls short here.
4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, Their Record
Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation 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 wasn't a certainty after his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.
The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen bet on newbies. From the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements into sync.
After an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.
The results are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.
3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record
Every Strong of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.
Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him just a single place ahead of other QBs.
Still
