How The Bizarre Campaign Broke the Typical NFL Coach of the Year Mould.
Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a kind of apology. We regret we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign projections.
In theory, it's a direct line: the skipper who engineered the biggest resurgence receives the prize. In reality, it sparks an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior coaching or just the biggest surprise.
Yet the current race is profoundly different. The list of nominees is exceptionally strong. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners fading and recent underperformers rising collectively. Under an normal season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and thrilling year, he's facing five other outstanding candidates.
Here is how the ideal vote could look.
5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, 11-5
Coach of the Year voters love QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.
The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system rather than freelancing. It is an offense designed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a steady helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to spin big plays from nothing.
The coach arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.
In a normal season, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But this is not a normal season!
The area where his case comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained success. But Johnson falls just short here.
4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record
The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.
What's more notably, Coen has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which was not a certainty following his initial public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.
Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff blend of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. But he has pulled everyone and everything together.
After an early hot start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.
The results are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.
3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record
Every Coach of the Year argument has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.
Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed after that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of peers.
Still
