How This Strange Campaign Broke the Traditional Coach of the Year Mold.
Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently functions as a type of apology. We regret we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.
On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the largest improvement receives the award. However, it sparks an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're actually honoring superior coaching or just the most shocking surprise.
But the latest competition is distinctly unique. The group of candidates is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with recent division winners fading and recent strugglers ascending collectively. In an ordinary season, a coach leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling year, he's competing with five other outstanding candidates.
Below is how the hypothetical vote should be structured.
5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5
Voters for Coach of the Year voters love signal-callers. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.
Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to showcase his rare ability. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's prolonged performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to create big plays out of nothing.
The coach came to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost each decision – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.
During a ordinary year, he would be the runaway choice. But this isn't a typical season!
Where Johnson's case runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term success. But Johnson comes up short in this ranking.
4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4
Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.
Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which wasn't a guarantee after his initial public appearances and some of his preseason moves.
The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. Yet he has pulled everyone and all elements together.
Following an early strong start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.
The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.
3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record
Every Coach of the Year argument has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.
Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.
Still