How The Bizarre Season Broke the Typical Coach of the Year Mold.
Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward script. It often serves as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.
On paper, it's a direct path: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence wins the award. In practice, it creates an annual argument about expectations and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or merely the most shocking surprise.
But the current competition is profoundly unique. The group of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference winners declining and longtime strugglers ascending in unison. Under an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this wild and entertaining year, he's facing five other elite candidates.
Below is how the hypothetical vote ought to be structured.
5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5
Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.
The Bears' head coach not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his special talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to spin big plays from nothing.
The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the kind of hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.
In a typical season, he would be the runaway choice. But this is not a typical campaign!
Where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. But he falls short in this ranking.
4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, Their Record
Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.
What's more notably, he has mastered the leadership stuff, which was not a certainty following his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.
Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching mix of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.
After an early strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year setback had the team wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.
The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. He gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.
3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record
Each Coach of the Year argument has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.
Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.
Still
