🔗 Share this article

Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple formula. It frequently functions as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our preseason predictions.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the largest improvement is handed the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or merely the most shocking surprise.

Yet this year's race is distinctly unique. The pool of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference champions fading and longtime strugglers rising collectively. In an typical season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and fun year, he's facing multiple other elite candidates.

Here is how the ideal ballot could look.

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

Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. From midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to conjure big plays from broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually each bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the immense expectations he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a normal year, he would be the overwhelming choice. But this is not a typical season!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for sustained winning. But he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the intangibles aspects, which was not a certainty after his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching blend of youth and experience, he trusted first-timers. From the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet he has pulled everyone and all elements together.

Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Coach 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 new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it made it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off after that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him just one place ahead of peers.

Still