Who's the real NFL Coach of the Year? Debating Mike Vrabel vs. Liam Coen, Ben Johnson & Mike Macdonald

Who's the real NFL Coach of the Year? Debating Mike Vrabel vs. Liam Coen, Ben Johnson & Mike Macdonald originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Only three times in the past 10 seasons have The Sporting News and Associated Press differed on the award for NFL Coach of the Year. A close race from the 2025 regular season is likely to produce differences again.

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Mike Vrabel remains the consensus odds-on favorite for his first year coaching the New England Patriots. Mike Macdonald has made his case behind him with a strong second season for the Seattle Seahawks. Two rookie coaches, the Jacksonville Jaguars' Liam Coen and the Bears' Ben Johnson, round out the list of top candidates.

In any other year, what Kyle Shanahan has done with the injury-riddled 49ers or what Sean McVay keeps doing to keep the Rams near the top of the league would get more buzz. But there's no doubt the newness of those four coaches plays a big factor in being the "finalists".

Coach of the Year is subjective. The criteria are different for every voter, either from the AP or NFL coaching peers polled by Sporting News. Some voters just look to the teams that have overachieved the most vs. expectations. Other voters consider how much of a quick turnaround a team has experienced.

There are no real stats for the Coach of the Year comparison, so it's time to create a comparative matrix. Beyond wins and losses and where a team ranked offensively and defensively, improvement from last season and record in one-possession games are key. Let's also factor on how much healthy top talent a team had by looking at the basic Pro Bowl selections on each roster.

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Now let's go coach-by-coach to see who has the "best" case:

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NFL coach of the year comparisons

Mike Vrabel, Patriots

Vrabel has a strong resume for sure, beyond being a familiar big name on a marquee team, much improving over the one-year Jerod Mayo tenure. He has had big winning years in Tennessee before, but with offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels helping QB Drake Maye to a second-year breakout, the results have been special.

Mike Macdonald, Seahawks

Macdonald hinted at his level of coaching when the Seahawks just missed the NFC playoffs at 10-7 last season. He made a huge move to revive the offense by replacing Ryan Grubb with Klint Kubiak. Having the best record in a tough, top-heavy NFC is an impressive feat. The team is off-the-charts complete and a real threat to win Super Bowl 60.

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Liam Coen, Jaguars

Coen has done an amazing job getting Trevor Lawrence into a tailor-made offense with a lot of balance, explosiveness and weapons. They also help that offense with a takeaway-forcing defense led by Anthony Campanile. The Jaguars ended up playing a much tougher division, finishing ahead of the defense-driven Texans and offense-skilled Colts. They have developed into a complete, often dominant team after midseason, winners of eight straight games.

Ben Johnson, Bears

Johnson ended up with the fewest wins of this group, but his restoring real championship hopes to the Bears is something special. Johnson has done well to get No. 1 overall pick QB Caleb Williams on track for big things, much like Coen has done for Lawrence. The resume his strong here, except for that shaky overall defense that can be a playoff bugaboo.

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Who should be NFL Coach of the Year?

Vrabel and Coen are the best stories here with their massive flips to strong playoff contenders after both teams picked near the top of the 2025 NFL draft. Macdonald would win in most years and has established that he will do a lot of winning with Seattle for a long time. There's definitely some natural East Coast bias here, with the marquee-ness of the Patriots edging the Jaguars.

Vrabel had two Pro Bowlers, MVP candidate Maye and cornerback Christian Gonzalez. For how successful the Jaguars were with Lawrence breaking through, their only Pro Bowler is their long snapper, Ross Matiscik. The Seahawks having six (Sam Darnold, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, DeMarcus Lawrence, Leonard Williams, Devon Witherspoon, Rashid Shaheed) is more of a testament to the recent work of long-time GM John Schneider.

It's too bad Coach of the Year can't be determined by what happens in the playoffs, because that would help create some AFC separation for Vrabel vs. Coen and some NFC separation for Macdonald vs. Johnson.

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When looking at the complete body of work now for the regular season, Vrabel deserves to win as the favorite in a narrow margin over Coen.