🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It often serves as a type of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who oversaw the biggest improvement wins the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior leadership or merely the most shocking surprise.

However this year's race is profoundly unique. The group of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with recent division champions falling away and longtime also-rans ascending together. In an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a turbulent and entertaining season, he's facing several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal ballot could be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. From midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an attack built entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide-open targets consistently. Williams has capitalized. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to create big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the kind of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

During a typical year, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current isn't a typical year!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term success. However he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership aspects, which was not a guarantee after his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. From the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still