How The Bizarre Campaign Shattered the Traditional NFL Coach of the Year Blueprint.
Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple pattern. It frequently functions as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your franchise in our preseason forecasts.
On paper, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the most dramatic turnaround wins the award. In reality, it fuels an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or merely the most shocking surprise.
Yet this year's field is fundamentally unique. The pool of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division winners fading and longtime underperformers ascending collectively. In an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's facing five other exceptional candidates.
Below is how the hypothetical ballot should look.
5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5
Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.
The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to display his special ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than improvising. It is an offense built solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a steady dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been capable to create magic from nothing.
The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the level of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.
In a typical year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But this is not a typical season!
Where his case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term success. However he falls just short in this ranking.
4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4
The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has masterminded a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.
What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given after his initial public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.
Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching blend of new ideas and experience, he bet on first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.
Following an early strong beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A midseason collapse caused the team stumbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.
The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.
3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record
Each Coach of the Year narrative has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.
Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just one spot ahead of other QBs.
Still
