How This Strange Season Broke the Traditional Coach of the Year Mold.
Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It often functions as a kind of apology. Sorry we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.
Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement is handed the prize. In practice, it fuels an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or simply the biggest upset.
But the current race is profoundly unique. The list of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division winners fading and recent underperformers ascending collectively. During an ordinary year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this chaotic and thrilling season, he's competing with several other outstanding candidates.
Here is how the projected ballot should be structured.
5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5
Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.
The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that frees wide-open targets all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure magic out of broken plays.
The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the building with the level of hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.
During a typical season, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet the current is not a typical year!
Where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term success. But Johnson falls short here.
4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4
Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball 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.
Even more notably, Coen has nailed the off-field stuff, which was not a certainty after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.
The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet he has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.
Following an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.
The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.
3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record
Every Coach of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.
Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him only one spot ahead of peers.
Still
