🔗 Share this article

Usually, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It commonly acts as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered 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 simply the most shocking shock.

Yet this year's race is distinctly different. The pool of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions declining and longtime also-rans rising together. In an ordinary season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this wild and entertaining season, he's up against five other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the projected vote should look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to spin big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Almost every decision – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a ordinary season, he would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current isn't a typical year!

Where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for long-term success. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the leadership aspects, which was not a certainty after his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching blend of new ideas and experience, he trusted newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting 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.

Following an initial hot start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

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

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still