🔗 Share this article

Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple script. It often functions as a type of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who engineered the largest improvement is handed the award. In reality, it creates an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or merely the greatest upset.

However this year's competition is profoundly unique. The pool of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent conference winners declining and recent underperformers rising together. In an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this wild and entertaining season, he's up against five other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote should look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters love QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. From midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to spin big plays out of nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a normal season, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this isn't a normal campaign!

The area where Johnson's case comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for sustained winning. But he falls just short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has nailed the off-field stuff, which was not a guarantee after his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect staff blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the season in October. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of peers.

Still