How This Bizarre Campaign Broke the Traditional Coach of the Year Mould.
Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple formula. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign projections.
In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic turnaround wins the prize. In reality, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or merely the biggest upset.
But the current race is distinctly unique. The group of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference champions falling away and recent strugglers rising together. Under an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and fun season, he's competing with five other exceptional coaches.
Here is how the ideal vote ought to look.
5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5
Coach of the Year voters love QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way home.
Ben Johnson not only fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the chance to display his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack built solely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when openings weren't there, he's been capable to spin magic out of nothing.
Johnson came to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.
During a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But this is not a normal year!
Where his candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.
4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4
Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.
Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership stuff, which was not a given after his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.
The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. But he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.
Following an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.
The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.
3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3
Each Coach of the Year case has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.
Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him just one spot ahead of other QBs.
Still
