🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward formula. It often functions as a kind of apology. We regret we misjudged your franchise in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who engineered the largest resurgence wins the award. However, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or merely the biggest upset.

However the current field is profoundly unique. The list of candidates is remarkably strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners declining and recent underperformers improving together. In an typical year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this chaotic and thrilling year, he's competing with multiple other elite candidates.

This is how the ideal vote should shake out.

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

Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, the QB has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an attack designed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been capable to spin magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet the current isn't a typical campaign!

The area where his candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. However he falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has nailed the intangibles aspects, which was not a certainty following his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

After an initial hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still