🔗 Share this article

Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple formula. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest resurgence receives the award. In practice, it sparks an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or just the biggest surprise.

However this year's field is profoundly different. The group of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been messy, with reigning division champions declining and longtime underperformers ascending together. In an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a turbulent and thrilling year, he's up against multiple other exceptional coaches.

This is how the hypothetical ballot should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged excellence. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to create big plays from broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every decision – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the level of pressure he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet this 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 living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which was not a given after his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff mix of youth and experience, Coen bet on first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking reliable ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just one place ahead of peers.

Still