How The Bizarre Campaign Broke the Typical Coach of the Year Mould.
Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often functions as a kind of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our preseason forecasts.
Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest improvement wins the prize. However, it creates an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent leadership or simply the most shocking shock.
But the current field is distinctly different. The group of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been messy, with recent conference champions fading and recent strugglers rising together. During an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this wild and fun season, he's competing with several other elite coaches.
This is how the ideal vote should shake out.
5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record
Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.
Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right system, the QB has been given the opportunity to display his special ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to create magic from broken plays.
Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the organization with the level of expectations he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.
During a typical year, he would be the runaway choice. But the current isn't a typical campaign!
The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained success. However he comes up just short in this ranking.
4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record
The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.
Even more impressively, he has mastered the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a given after his initial press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.
Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and experience, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.
After an initial hot start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse had the team wobbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.
The results are evident. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.
3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3
Each Strong of the Year case has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.
Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him only one spot ahead of peers.
Still
