🔗 Share this article

Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple pattern. It frequently acts as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign forecasts.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the largest resurgence receives the prize. In practice, it creates an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or merely the most shocking upset.

Yet this year's field is distinctly unique. The pool of candidates is exceptionally deep. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been messy, with reigning conference winners falling away and recent also-rans improving in unison. In an ordinary season, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this chaotic and fun season, he's competing with five other elite coaches.

Below is how the ideal vote could be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his special talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of going rogue. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open targets consistently. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to spin magic from broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost each decision – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the kind of hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a normal season, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. Yet the current is not a typical campaign!

The area where his case runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. However he falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a rapid turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which wasn't a given after his initial public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and experience, Coen bet on first-timers. From the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet he has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback had the team wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

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

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

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still