How This Unusual Campaign Broke the Traditional NFL Coach of the Year Formula.
Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently functions as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our preseason forecasts.
On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who engineered the largest resurgence receives the award. In practice, it fuels an annual debate about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or just the most shocking shock.
Yet this year's field is distinctly different. The list of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division winners fading and recent underperformers improving collectively. During an typical season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this chaotic and fun year, he's up against several other exceptional coaches.
Here is how the ideal vote ought to shake out.
5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5
Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.
Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper system, Williams has been given the chance to display his rare talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system rather than freelancing. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that frees wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been able to conjure magic from nothing.
The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, 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 genius but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.
During a typical season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. But the current is not a typical season!
Where Johnson's case runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term success. But he comes up short in this ranking.
4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4
The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.
Even more impressively, Coen has excelled at the off-field stuff, which was not a given following his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.
Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the ideal staff blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. From the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled everyone and everything into sync.
Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.
The results are clear. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.
3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3
Every Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.
Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.
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