🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward formula. It commonly serves as a kind of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the largest improvement receives the award. In practice, it sparks an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or simply the greatest surprise.

But the current race is profoundly different. The list of contenders is exceptionally talented. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division winners declining and longtime strugglers rising together. Under an normal year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. But in this wild and thrilling season, he's up against multiple other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical vote could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to display his special ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system rather than improvising. It is an offense built solely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure magic from nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the building with the immense pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet this isn't a normal season!

Where his case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up just short here.

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

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the off-field aspects, which wasn't a certainty after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year argument has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him just a single spot ahead of peers.

Still