🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple formula. It frequently acts as a form of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who orchestrated the largest improvement receives the award. In practice, it creates an annual debate about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring superior coaching or simply the biggest upset.

However this year's field is fundamentally unique. The list of contenders is exceptionally deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with reigning conference champions fading and longtime underperformers improving collectively. Under an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and fun season, he's facing multiple other outstanding coaches.

This is how the hypothetical vote ought to look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open targets everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when openings haven't been available, he's been able to spin big plays from nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the level of hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a normal year, he would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current is not a normal year!

Where his candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. However Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has nailed the leadership stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and experience, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A midseason collapse had the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The results are clear. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of peers.

Still