🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It frequently serves as a type of apology. We regret we misjudged your squad in our preseason predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the biggest improvement receives the prize. However, it sparks an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent leadership or simply the most shocking surprise.

But this year's competition is profoundly unique. The group of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners fading and recent underperformers improving in unison. Under an ordinary season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a turbulent and thrilling year, he's facing several other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the projected ballot ought to look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged excellence. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure magic from nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the immense expectations Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, he would be the runaway favorite. But the current isn't a typical campaign!

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for sustained success. However he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership stuff, which was not a given following his initial public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has regressed after that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still