How The Strange Season Redefined the Traditional Coach of the Year Mold.
Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently serves as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our preseason projections.
Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the biggest improvement receives the award. However, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or just the biggest shock.
Yet this year's competition is profoundly unique. The list of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference champions fading and recent underperformers ascending in unison. Under an normal year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a wild and thrilling year, he's competing with five other exceptional coaches.
Here is how the ideal vote ought to shake out.
5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record
Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third 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 unleashed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to create big plays out of broken plays.
The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Almost every decision – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has worked. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.
During a typical year, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet this isn't a typical campaign!
Where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. But he comes up short here.
4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record
The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.
Even more notably, he has mastered the intangibles aspects, which was not a guarantee following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.
The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. Yet he has pulled everyone and everything into sync.
After an initial hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.
The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.
3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3
Each Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.
Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.
Still
