🔗 Share this article

Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward formula. It commonly acts as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your team in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who oversaw the largest resurgence receives the award. In reality, it creates an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or merely the greatest shock.

However the current race is distinctly different. The group of nominees is exceptionally strong. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division champions fading and longtime also-rans improving together. Under an typical year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and entertaining season, he's competing with several other elite candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical vote should look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right system, the QB has been given the opportunity to showcase his otherworldly ability. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an offense built solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that frees wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to create big plays from broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost every decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the kind of hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

During a typical year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current is not a typical campaign!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up just short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the intangibles stuff, which was not a given after his initial public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an early strong start, there was a possibility that the season would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

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

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the season in October. Rather, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still