🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward script. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the largest turnaround is handed the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent leadership or simply the biggest upset.

However this year's competition is distinctly different. The group of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division champions declining and longtime strugglers ascending collectively. In an normal season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. But in this chaotic and entertaining year, he's facing several other elite candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot could be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his rare talent. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's prolonged performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an offense constructed entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide-open targets consistently. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been capable to create big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, he would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet the current is not a normal season!

Where Johnson's case runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has nailed the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a given after his early public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on newbies. From the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. Yet he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the team wobbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still