🔗 Share this article

Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward pattern. It commonly acts as a form of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the largest turnaround wins the award. In reality, it creates an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or just the most shocking shock.

However this year's field is distinctly unique. The pool of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference champions declining and longtime strugglers rising together. During an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this chaotic and thrilling year, he's up against five other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot ought to be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to display his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that frees wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to conjure big plays from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a normal year, he would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet the current isn't a typical campaign!

Where his candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term success. But he comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which wasn't a given after his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and experience, Coen bet on newbies. From the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. But he has pulled everyone and everything together.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him just a single spot ahead of peers.

Still