How this strange NFL season broke the Coach of the Year mold | NFL

The NFL Coach of the Year award is simple. This usually serves as a mea culpa. We’re sorry that our preseason predictions about your team turned out to be wrong.

In theory, it’s a straight line: the coach who makes the biggest turnaround gets rewarded. In practice, it’s an annual debate about expectations and whether we reward real coaching or just the biggest surprise.

But this year’s race is a little different. The candidate pool is exceptionally large. This was the season turnovers. The league has been messy, with recent division winners falling and recent ones all rising together. In an ordinary year, Sean Payton guiding the Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in a chaotic and fun year, he finds himself up against five other exceptional candidates.

Here’s how the vote should go.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you’re halfway there.

Ben Johnson didn’t just fix Caleb Williams; he unlocked it. In the right ecosystem, Williams had the opportunity to showcase his preternatural talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. It’s not about a streak of success – it’s about sustained excellence. Under Johnson, Williams became more decisive, less reckless, and willingly turned to the draft rather than freelancing. This is an offense built uniquely like Johnson: a ball-running game, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers. everywhere. Williams took advantage. And when the openings weren’t there, he managed to create magic out of nothing.

Johnson arrived in Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Almost every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, emphasizing tight ends, turning Williams into a pace thrower – paid off. That’s rare for a first-year head coach. And it’s even rarer for a coach to come into the building with the kind of expectations Johnson had. For two consecutive cycles, he has been the hottest name in the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, nothing is certain. Somehow, Johnson lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He proved not only to be an idiot, but also the kind of culture builder who can breathe new life into an organization.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the heavy favorite. But this is not a normal season!

Where Johnson’s candidacy takes off (slightly) is on defense. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They live on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can emphasize ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. It’s not higher because the variance is doing too much defensive work. With some ball bouncing, the Bears would be two wins worse off. This is an exceptional turnaround and the foundations for long-term success are in place. But Johnson fails here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to Johnson. He’s another first-time head coach who managed to get a quick turnaround. Over the latter part of the year, Trevor Lawrence played the best all-around ball of his career. And he also oversaw the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per game.

Even more impressive, Coen got things right off the field, which wasn’t a given after his goofy opening press conference and some of his off-season decisions.

Coen arrived in Jacksonville with an unusually brutal staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded himself with a perfect cocktail of youth and experience, Coen focused on beginners. From the head coach himself to the coordinators to the position coaches, the Jags are loaded with starters. This kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often falls apart in practice – Nathaniel Hackett’s Broncos are a prime example – because everyone is learning a new trade on the fly. But Coen brought everyone and everything together.

After an initial hot start, there was a chance the season could be derailed. A midseason collapse against Houston left the Jags reeling again. This is usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn’t. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped looking for explosive answers and started looking for lasting answers. Coen refocused the offense around Jakobi Meyers and the running game, and had Lawrence use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won seven straight and will be the AFC’s third seed in the playoffs. Coen takes the slightest hit in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he’s proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback’s decision.

Moving on from Geno Smith, signing Sam Darnold and pairing him with offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak could have ended the season in October. Instead, he defined it. Midway through the year, Darnold was one of the MVP favorites. He has fallen back since then, slipping to 23rd in EPA by decline during the second half of the season, putting him just one spot ahead of JJ McCarthy and behind Baker Mayfield.

Yet the Seahawks continue to come away with victories. Macdonald made his three most important decisions this offseason: quarterback, coordinator and identity. He also serves as a defensive play caller for the league’s second-ranked defense. Without that defensive firepower, the Seahawks’ season would have stalled while Darnold was in bad shape.

Seattle’s preseason win total was seven and a half. They are now the No. 1 seed in the NFC, with 13 wins, with the best point differential in the conference. If they beat the Niners on Sunday, they will get the top seed. In a brutal division, Macdonald not only exceeded expectations, he dashed them.

2) Mike Vrabel, New England Patriots, 13-3

There are turnovers, and then there’s everything Vrabel did in New England. Last season’s Patriots weren’t just bad. They were directionless, devoid of talent and ideas. It seemed like they were planning a rebuild over several years, in the hopes of being able to put in place Nothing around Drake Maye to find out what they had in the young quarterback. Instead, they are the AFC East champions, have by far the best point differential in the conference and Maye is one of the MVP favorites.

Of course, you can point out the historic weakness of the Patriots’ schedule for hitting Vrabel. But that doesn’t take into account that the Patriots were hardly contenders to begin with. The schedule may be flexible, but every team viewed the Patriots as a weak spot on their schedule going into the season.

A team that seemed devoid of talent now stands out, relying on veterans, rookies and Maye to rack up 13 wins.

Vrabel’s fingerprints are all over the transformation. He had the final say on personnel last offseason, and almost every decision was a success. He brought back Josh McDaniels as offensive coordinator, not out of nostalgia but to bring some professionalism back to the operation. When defensive coordinator Terrell Williams stepped away from the team to receive treatment for a cancer diagnosis, Vrabel handed the reins to the unknown Zak Kuhr to call the plays while taking on more day-to-day responsibilities himself. On defense, the Patriots have been ineffective, but they are fifth in points per game. Offensively, it’s the fire of the furnace. After trailing the Jets last week, they sit first in the league in EPA per game. Flexible schedule or not, they took advantage of it.

Vrabel’s job this season was to make the Patriots respectable again. He did more than that. Even with a torrent of injuries, the Patriots are serious contenders with an MVP at quarterback.

1) Kyle Shanahan, San Francisco 49ers, 12-4

What is the job of a head coach? It’s about putting his players in a position to succeed and finding solutions when problems arise. Every other candidate on this list has done it, but none have done it to the same degree as Shanahan.

No coach has faced more challenges than Shanahan. The Niners lost Nick Bosa and Fred Warner early in the season. They played much of the year without Brock Purdy and George Kittle. They haven’t had Brandon Ayiuk all year. Every week, another difference-making player has been out of the lineup due to injury. And yet, they’re 12-4, with a chance to clinch the NFC’s No. 1 seed in the final week of the season. Oh, and this after an offseason cap purge that removed critical pieces of the team’s recent core.

This is where expectation bias usually kills a candidate. Shanahan is supposed be good. The 49ers are supposed earn. Barring a historic season, these coaches rarely get the gong. But this season should break the pattern. Assembling the sixth-ranked offense in the league when the only certainty was Christian McCaffrey is a remarkable feat.

This is the most adaptive version of Shanahan we’ve seen. The offense changed shape every week. The defense survived on tenacity and atmosphere rather than stars. It hasn’t always been pretty, but it has been effective.

Coach of the Year should recognize the coach who solves the most difficult problems. This season, no one has solved more than Kyle Shanahan. To even be competitive in some games, considering the injury issues, was a minor miracle. And now the Niners are healthy enough be a problem in the playoffs.