🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward formula. It often acts as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest resurgence wins the award. In practice, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or just the biggest surprise.

However this year's race is profoundly different. The list of nominees is exceptionally talented. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been messy, with recent division champions fading and recent underperformers rising in unison. During an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this chaotic and entertaining year, he's up against five other exceptional candidates.

This is how the hypothetical vote should shake out.

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

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained excellence. Under his guidance, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to create big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost every decision – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the organization with the kind of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a ordinary season, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet this is not a typical campaign!

Where Johnson's case comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During 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 spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has nailed the off-field stuff, which was not a certainty following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the ideal staff mix of new ideas and experience, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the track. A midseason collapse had the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

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

Each Coach of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still