Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward formula. It commonly functions as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our preseason projections.
Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who oversaw the most dramatic improvement wins the award. In practice, it creates an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or merely the biggest shock.
However this year's field is fundamentally different. The group of contenders is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with reigning division winners fading and recent underperformers rising together. Under an normal year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's up against several other elite candidates.
Below is how the projected ballot could shake out.
Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.
Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to create magic out of nothing.
The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the organization with the level of pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.
During a ordinary season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. But this isn't a typical campaign!
The area where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained success. However Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.
Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.
What's more impressively, he has nailed the off-field aspects, which was not a certainty after his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.
The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen trusted newbies. From the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.
After an early hot start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.
The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.
Every Strong of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.
Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only one place ahead of other QBs.
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