🔗 Share this article

Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a simple formula. It commonly serves as a kind of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic turnaround wins the prize. However, it fuels an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or simply the most shocking surprise.

However the current race is distinctly different. The list of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been messy, with reigning conference champions falling away and longtime strugglers improving together. Under an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this turbulent and entertaining year, he's facing five other elite candidates.

Here is how the projected ballot ought to look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his special ability. From Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's consistent dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a creative aerial game that springs wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to conjure magic out of nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the level of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a ordinary season, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current is not a normal year!

The area where Johnson's case comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the off-field stuff, which was not a given following his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason collapse caused the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

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

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year argument has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still