🔗 Share this article

Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple formula. It often acts as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement is handed the award. However, it sparks an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or merely the biggest upset.

Yet this year's competition is profoundly different. The pool of nominees is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning division winners falling away and recent also-rans ascending together. In an typical season, a coach leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in such a turbulent and entertaining season, he's competing with five other outstanding coaches.

This is how the projected ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure big plays from nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually each gamble – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet the current isn't a normal campaign!

Where Johnson's case runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained winning. However he falls short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a rapid resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the off-field aspects, which wasn't a certainty after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason setback caused the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the season in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still