🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward formula. It often acts as a type of apology. Sorry we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence wins the prize. In practice, it fuels an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or simply the most shocking shock.

But the latest competition is fundamentally unique. The pool of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions fading and longtime also-rans rising in unison. Under an normal season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a turbulent and thrilling year, he's competing with multiple other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot ought to shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been afforded the chance to showcase his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to conjure magic from nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost each bet – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the building with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a ordinary year, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current is not a normal season!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. However Johnson comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the leadership aspects, which was not a certainty following his early public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still