🔗 Share this article

Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple script. It often acts as a form of apology. Sorry we underestimated your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who orchestrated the largest resurgence wins the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or simply the biggest surprise.

However this year's field is profoundly unique. The list of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with reigning conference winners falling away and recent strugglers ascending collectively. Under an typical year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a turbulent and thrilling season, he's up against multiple other outstanding candidates.

Below is how the ideal ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his special ability. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of going rogue. It is an attack designed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a steady helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to spin magic out of nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Almost every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who walked into the building with the immense hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, he would be the overwhelming choice. But the current isn't a typical year!

Where Johnson's case comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. But he comes up short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the leadership stuff, which was not a guarantee after his initial press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and experience, he trusted newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an early hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year argument has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still