Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward script. It frequently serves as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your team in our preseason predictions.
On paper, it's a direct path: the coach who engineered the biggest turnaround wins the prize. However, it creates an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or just the most shocking surprise.
But the latest competition is distinctly unique. The pool of candidates is remarkably deep. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning division champions declining and longtime strugglers ascending in unison. In an ordinary year, a coach leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this turbulent and entertaining season, he's facing multiple other elite coaches.
Here is how the ideal vote could look.
Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.
Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right system, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent performance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide receiver targets consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to create magic out of nothing.
The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually each gamble – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme dork but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.
During a ordinary year, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this is not a normal campaign!
Where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for long-term winning. But he falls just short here.
Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.
What's more notably, Coen has nailed the intangibles aspects, which was not a guarantee after his early public appearances and some of his preseason moves.
The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching mix of youth and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.
After an initial hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.
The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.
Each Strong of the Year narrative has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.
Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has regressed after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him just a single spot ahead of peers.
Still
A tech journalist with over a decade of experience covering emerging technologies and digital innovation across Europe.
