How The Bizarre Campaign Shattered the Traditional NFL Coach of the Year Formula.
Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple formula. It often serves as a kind of apology. We regret we got wrong your franchise in our preseason predictions.
Theoretically, it's a direct line: the skipper who orchestrated the largest resurgence wins the prize. However, it creates an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or merely the greatest upset.
However this year's competition is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division champions falling away and longtime strugglers ascending together. During an ordinary year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and entertaining year, he's up against multiple other elite coaches.
This is how the hypothetical ballot should shake out.
5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, 11-5
Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.
The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained excellence. With his guidance, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action and a innovative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to create magic out of broken plays.
Johnson came to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the level of hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.
In a ordinary season, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. But this is not a normal season!
Where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term winning. But he comes up short in this ranking.
4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record
Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.
What's more notably, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.
Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and experience, he hired first-timers. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.
After an initial strong beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.
The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.
3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3
Every Strong of the Year case has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.
Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.
Still
