How This Unusual Campaign Redefined the Typical Coach of the Year Formula.
Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward pattern. It frequently functions as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.
On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement is handed the award. In reality, it fuels an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior coaching or merely the biggest surprise.
But the latest race is distinctly unique. The list of contenders is exceptionally deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been messy, with recent conference winners fading and longtime underperformers improving in unison. In an ordinary year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and fun year, he's facing five other elite candidates.
Below is how the projected ballot could look.
5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record
Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.
The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been given the opportunity to display his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been capable to spin big plays from nothing.
Johnson came to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the building with the kind of expectations he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.
During a normal season, he would be the clear-cut choice. But this is not a normal campaign!
The area where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for sustained success. However Johnson falls short in this ranking.
4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record
The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence 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 EPA per play.
What's more impressively, he has excelled at the leadership stuff, which was not a given following his initial public appearances and some of his offseason moves.
The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff blend of youth and experience, he hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.
Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the team wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking reliable ones. The coach recentered the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.
The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.
3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3
Each Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.
Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of other QBs.
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