🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple pattern. It frequently serves as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who engineered the largest turnaround is handed the prize. However, it fuels an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or simply the biggest shock.

However this year's field is profoundly unique. The list of candidates is exceptionally deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions fading and recent underperformers improving collectively. Under an normal year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in this wild and entertaining season, he's competing with several other exceptional candidates.

Below is how the ideal ballot could look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been given the chance to display his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an attack constructed solely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a steady dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that creates wide-open targets all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every gamble – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a ordinary year, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. But this isn't a typical campaign!

Where his case runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for long-term winning. However Johnson falls short here.

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

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has nailed the off-field aspects, which wasn't a given after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and all elements into sync.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still