🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It commonly serves as a form of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who oversaw the biggest resurgence receives the prize. However, it creates an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or merely the biggest upset.

However the latest field is profoundly unique. The pool of contenders is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions fading and recent underperformers rising collectively. In an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a wild and entertaining season, he's facing multiple other elite coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical vote could shake out.

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

Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his special talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained excellence. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than going rogue. It is an attack built entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to spin magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

In a typical season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet the current isn't a typical year!

The area where his case runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. However he falls just short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a swift resurgence. During 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 remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which was not a given following his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the season in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still