🔗 Share this article

Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward formula. It often acts as a form of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who oversaw the largest turnaround receives the award. However, it fuels an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or just the greatest upset.

Yet the latest field is profoundly unique. The list of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning division winners fading and longtime also-rans improving in unison. During an ordinary season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in this turbulent and entertaining season, he's facing several other elite candidates.

Here is how the projected ballot could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that springs wide receiver targets consistently. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to spin magic out of broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of expectations he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a typical year, he would be the overwhelming choice. But the current is not a typical season!

The area where his candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up just short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the leadership stuff, which was not a given following his early public appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback had the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Coach of the Year case has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off after that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still