How This Bizarre Season Broke the Typical Coach of the Year Mould.
Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It often serves as a kind of apology. Sorry we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign forecasts.
On paper, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest improvement is handed the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or just the biggest shock.
But the latest race is profoundly different. The list of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division champions falling away and recent strugglers ascending together. Under an normal year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's competing with multiple other outstanding candidates.
Below is how the ideal vote should be structured.
5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, Their Record
Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.
The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right system, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged excellence. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a innovative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure big plays from nothing.
Johnson came to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost each decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the building with the level of pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.
In a ordinary season, he would be the clear-cut choice. But this is not a normal year!
Where Johnson's case comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term winning. However Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.
4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record
The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.
Even more notably, he has excelled at the leadership stuff, which wasn't a given after his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.
The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff mix of youth and experience, he hired first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and everything together.
Following an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason setback had the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.
The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. He gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.
3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record
Every Strong of the Year argument has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.
Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him just one place ahead of peers.
Still
