🔗 Share this article

Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It commonly acts as a type of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest turnaround receives the award. In practice, it sparks an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or simply the greatest upset.

However this year's competition is profoundly unique. The pool of nominees is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division winners fading and recent also-rans ascending in unison. In an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this wild and fun season, he's up against five other outstanding candidates.

Below is how the projected ballot should be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, 11-5

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

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his special talent. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to spin big plays from nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the building with the immense expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

In a typical season, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current is not a typical campaign!

Where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. But he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has masterminded a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which was not a given following his initial public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he hired newbies. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

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

Every Strong of the Year argument has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still