How The Strange Campaign Broke the Traditional Coach of the Year Blueprint.
Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently serves as a kind of apology. We regret we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.
Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who oversaw the largest improvement is handed the award. However, it creates an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent coaching or simply the biggest surprise.
Yet the latest race is profoundly different. The group of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning division winners fading and recent underperformers rising together. During an typical year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling season, he's competing with multiple other elite coaches.
Here is how the projected ballot ought to shake out.
5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record
Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.
The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an attack built solely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers consistently. Williams has capitalized. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to create big plays out of broken plays.
The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.
During a normal year, he would be the runaway favorite. But the current is not a normal year!
The area where Johnson's case comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress 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 an outsized share of the defensive work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.
4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4
The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around 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 notably, he has mastered the intangibles aspects, which was not a guarantee following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.
Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he trusted newbies. From the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet he has pulled the entire group and everything together.
Following an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the track. A midseason collapse caused the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.
The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.
3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3
Each Coach of the Year argument has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.
Moving on from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just a single spot ahead of peers.
Still