The NFL is down to the final quarter of the 2024 regular season, and we have some interesting award races to decide in these last four games. But maybe the deepest field of worthy candidates this year comes in the Coach of the Year category.
After reminding us that he has balls of steel on these fourth-down decisions, Dan Campbell of the Detroit Lions is the betting favorite for Coach of the Year at FanDuel. But even though the Lions are the favorites to win Super Bowl LIX, it’s not like Campbell is even a sure bet to win his tough division. That’s why there are eight coaches with odds of +3000 or better as we go into Week 15 who are worth consideration for Coach of the Year:
- Dan Campbell, Lions (-140)
- Kevin O’Connell, Vikings (+340)
- Mike Tomlin, Steelers (+650)
- Sean Payton, Broncos (+1800)
- Dan Quinn, Commanders (+1800)
- Mike Macdonald, Seahawks (+2000)
- Andy Reid, Chiefs (+2500)
- Jim Harbaugh, Chargers (+3000)
In any given year, you could make the case for any of these coaches to win the award:
- Campbell and Andy Reid are leading some fairly injured teams to the best record in the league at 12-1 while both dealing with a division that is likely to send two wild card teams to the playoffs.
- Kevin O’Connell is blowing away preseason expectations (O/U 6.5 wins) at 11-2 with Sam Darnold as his quarterback in Minnesota, and don’t forget he lost rookie J.J. McCarthy in the preseason of what was supposed to be a rebuilding year.
- Mike Tomlin made the unpopular (but very right) move to replace Justin Fields with Russell Wilson, but the Steelers are 10-3 and thriving for a potential AFC North title despite being last place in the preseason odds in the division.
- Sean Payton and Dan Quinn are both in line to make the playoffs with rookie quarterbacks Bo Nix and Jayden Daniels battling it out for Offensive Rookie of the Year on teams that weren’t expected to win this season.
- Rookie coach Mike Macdonald has the Seahawks (8-5) unexpectedly leading the NFC West after improving the defense.
- Jim Harbaugh’s return to the NFL has gone well as he has the Chargers (8-5) in position for a wild card spot in the AFC West, and he has changed the culture with that team holding the No. 1 scoring defense.
A lot of different narratives to consider from having the best record to uplifting a bad team to the playoffs, but what usually sways voters for this award? We did a deep dive on the last four decades of voting results for the NFL Coach of the Year award. Then we will break down what can happen in these last four weeks to determine this year’s winner.
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What Do Voters Usually Go for with the NFL Coach of the Year Award?
The Associated Press (AP) has been voting on the NFL Coach of the Year award since 1957. We broke down the voting results going back to 1985 to look at the last four decades of what seems to sway voters.
There are three primary paths to winning this award, and we have seen a pretty even distribution of how often each path wins it.
Improved Their NFL Team to the Playoffs, Non-Rookie (14 Winners)
Since 1985, there have been 14 Coach of the Year winners who improved their team to the playoffs after missing it the previous year:
- Jim Mora (1987 Saints)
- Wayne Fontes (1991 Lions)
- Dan Reeves (1993 Giants)
- Bill Parcells (1994 Patriots)
- Dom Capers (1996 Panthers)
- Dan Reeves (1998 Falcons)
- Dick Vermeil (1999 Rams)
- Dick Jauron (2001 Bears)
- Marty Schottenheimer (2004 Chargers)
- Lovie Smith (2005 Bears)
- Marvin Lewis (2009 Bengals)
- Ron Rivera (2013 Panthers)
- Bruce Arians (2014 Cardinals)
- Kevin Stefanski (2023 Browns)
There are not a lot of recent winners in this group, and there’s no denying that Bruce Arians (2014 Cardinals) and Kevin Stefanski (2023 Browns) largely won it because they both had to start multiple quarterbacks in those seasons. Arians was a respectable 5-5 without Carson Palmer, who he was 6-0 with. Last year, Stefanski made some history by starting five quarterbacks, winning games with four of them, and making the playoffs behind Joe Flacco late in the season.
But all 14 coaches were in Years 2-4 of their tenure with the team except for Marvin Lewis, who was in Year 7 with the Bengals, making the playoffs for the first time since 2005, and Dan Reeves was the only veteran coach in his first year to come in and immediately lead a losing team to the playoffs with the 1993 Giants.
These are the coaches who needed a few years to get the ship moving in the right direction, which would apply to in Denver this year, his second season with the Broncos.
Improved Their NFL Team to the Playoffs, Rookie (12 Winners)
Since 1985, there have been 12 Coach of the Year winners who improved their team to the playoffs in their rookie season as an NFL head coach. This would be Mike Macdonald’s path in Seattle this year, and it has won the award in the past for coaches like Sean Payton and Jim Harbaugh.
- Bill Cowher (1992 Steelers)
- Ray Rhodes (1995 Eagles)
- Jim Fassel (1997 Giants)
- Jim Haslett (2000 Saints)
- Sean Payton (2006 Saints)
- Mike Smith (2008 Falcons)
- Jim Harbaugh (2011 49ers)
- Bruce Arians (2012 Colts)*
- Sean McVay (2017 Rams)
- Matt Nagy (2018 Bears)
- Kevin Stefanski (2020 Browns)
- Brian Daboll (2022 Giants)
*Bruce Arians was the interim coach for the 2012 Colts while rookie coach Chuck Pagano was out for cancer treatments.
The lack of success for Matt Nagy and Brian Daboll after their rookie years have some branding this as the reason why it’s a bad thing to win Coach of the Year for your long-term employment prospects. But you can see Arians was a good coach for multiple teams, Sean McVay is one of the best coaches today, and even Stefanski has won this award twice in Cleveland, so that angle may be a little overblown. Bill Cowher is also in the Hall of Fame and Payton will likely join him one day.
Finished with the Best Record/Top Seed (11 Winners)
The third group includes the 11 winners since 1985 who finished with the best record in the NFL and/or had a No. 1 seed that season. This is what Dan Campbell and Andy Reid are competing for this season.
- Mike Ditka (1985 Bears)
- Bill Parcells (1986 Giants)
- Mike Ditka (1988 Bears)
- Andy Reid (2002 Eagles)
- Bill Belichick (2003 Patriots)
- Bill Belichick (2007 Patriots)
- Bill Belichick (2010 Patriots)
- Ron Rivera (2015 Panthers)
- Jason Garrett (2016 Cowboys)
- John Harbaugh (2019 Ravens)
- Mike Vrabel (2021 Titans)
In every case except for Jason Garrett in 2016, this coach had the best record in the NFL and the No. 1 seed. Garrett only had the No. 1 seed with a 13-3 record in Dallas as Belichick’s Patriots had the best record in the league at 14-2. But Garrett got the nod for doing it with rookies like Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott while Belichick still had Tom Brady (after the Deflategate suspension).
In 9-of-11 cases, the team made the playoffs the year before. While Belichick’s Patriots missed the playoffs in 2002, they were still a 9-7 team with a winning record, a year removed from winning the Super Bowl.
While you could argue Garrett’s inclusion on this list for the 2016 Cowboys could make him belong on the first list of coaches who took a bad team to the playoffs, the fact is the Cowboys were a 12-4 team in 2014, went through a major quarterback injury season with Tony Romo in 2015 to finish 4-12, then rebounded right away with Dak Prescott’s rookie year in 2016. It’s different than the usual situations of a coach needing to build up a bad team. The Cowboys were usually .500 or better under The Clapper, and 2015 was the outlier.
An interesting fact here is that every coach was in Year 4 or later with their team, and 5-of-11 winners were in exactly Year 4. Who happens to be in his fourth season with his team this year? Dan Campbell in Detroit.
Having an MVP was not a detriment to these coaches winning the award, or at least it wasn’t in the cases of Bill Parcells having Lawrence Taylor in 1986, Bill Belichick had Tom Brady in 2007 and 2010, Ron Rivera had Cam Newton in 2015, and John Harbaugh had Lamar Jackson in 2019.
Improved a Bad Team in Year 2 (2 Winners)
While the previous three paths account for 37 of the last 39 winners, there were two winners who belonged in their own category since 1985. They happened in back-to-back years, they were both Year 2 coaches, and they both missed the playoffs, something no other Coach of the Year winners have done since.
In 1989, Green Bay coach Lindy Infante helped turn the team around from 4-12 in his first season to a 10-6 finish that was filled with exciting comeback wins engineered by quarterback Don Majkowski, but the Packers still fell short of the postseason.
Infante received 23 votes to edge out what became the two Super Bowl coaches that year in Dan Reeves (Broncos; 17.5 votes) and George Seifert (49ers; 16 votes). Seifert was a rookie coach replacing the legendary Bill Walsh, but many probably felt he had a super team with Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, and he also lost a game that year to Infante’s Packers.
The very next year in 1990, Jimmy Johnson of the Dallas Cowboys was named the Coach of the Year, a year after the infamous Herschel Walker trade that fleeced Minnesota out of a ton of draft picks that helped build a dynasty in Dallas. But Johnson’s record was only 7-9 after a 1-15 start in 1989, so it’s a little surprising he still won the award that year.
Johnson received 18.5 votes to edge out Art Shell of the Raiders, who had 16 votes for a 12-4 finish in his first full year as the coach of the Raiders.
It’s hard to imagine a coach today winning this award without qualifying for the playoffs, let alone not having a winning record. But that was the state of things in 1989-90, an outlier period.
Coach of the Year Runner-Up Trends
We were essentially able to chunk the NFL Coach of the Year winners into three primary groups since 1985. But if we try to do the same for the runners-up who finished second in voting for the award, it’s a lot more varied:
- Best record/top seed (14 coaches)
- Improved team to playoffs, non-rookie (12 coaches)
- Improved team to playoffs, rookie (5 coaches)
- Improved playoff team to No. 2 seed (3 coaches)
- Made playoffs after an off-year (2 coaches)
- Coached an expansion team as rookie (Dom Capers, 1995 Panthers)
- Improved bad team to a winning record in Year 2 (Raheem Morris, 2010 Buccaneers)
- Improved bad team to .500, rookie (Marvin Lewis, 2003 Bengals)
It is worth noting that between the winners and runners-up, the type of coach who doesn’t get much love at all from voters is someone who takes a playoff team to a higher seed (but not the top seed). That could apply to Tomlin this year if the Steelers are a No. 2 or No. 3 seed in the AFC after making the playoffs last year as a 10-7 wild card team that started three different quarterbacks.
If you look at the 16 closest races since 1985 for Coach of the Year where the winner was less than 20 percentage points ahead of the runner-up, in nine cases it was in years where the winner was a non-rookie who improved a bad team to the playoffs. Only once in 16 races did a coach with the best record/top seed have to sweat out winning the award when 1988 Mike Ditka (Bears) had 33 votes to 23 for Buffalo’s Marv Levy.
We actually just had the closest Coach of the Year race last year in 2023 between Kevin Stefanski (Browns) and DeMeco Ryans (Texans), who both finished with 165 vote points in ranked voting. However, Stefanski got the award due to having 21 first-place votes to 20 for Ryans. A likely deciding factor was the way Cleveland won with so many different quarterbacks while Ryans had the Offensive Rookie of the Year in C.J. Stroud.
You could also argue that Mike Smith (2008 Falcons) may have won the award in 2008 by one vote over Miami’s Tony Sparano because he did it with a rookie quarterback (Matt Ryan) while Sparano had a veteran in Chad Pennington. Both improved poor teams to 11-5 and the playoffs that year.
Who Wins the 2024 NFL Coach of the Year?
With four games to go, we have a pretty strong sense of which teams are making the playoffs, which narrows down the list of coaches who will win this award. But seeding and most division titles are very much up for grabs.
If the Lions (12-1) win out, you really have to give the award to Dan Campbell for a 16-1 record in one of the greatest division races in NFL history with how good the Vikings (11-2) and Packers (9-4) have been. Half of Green Bay’s losses are to this Detroit team, which certainly takes on Campbell’s gritty approach to the game.
But if Campbell loses to Buffalo this Sunday in a big game, then Kevin O’Connell’s Vikings can keep winning and have a path to the NFC North and quite possibly the No. 1 seed with a 15-2 record. If this team knocked off Seattle, and Green Bay, and then won in Detroit in Week 18 to win the division, how could you not give it to O’Connell?
That’s why the Week 18 game, Vikings at Lions, could very well determine who is the NFL’s Coach of the Year. Smart money is still on Campbell (-140 at FanDuel), but with these defensive injuries piling up and some really tough games left, you might find some real value in O’Connell at +340 odds right now.
If the Lions and Vikings both take another loss or two this season, then you really do have to give some thought to Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh, especially if he runs the table with this gauntlet against the Eagles, Ravens, and Chiefs with those first two games on the road. If he pulled that off, then he’d have a 14-3 record with a 7-0 record against playoff teams (8-0 if the Falcons rebound to win the NFC South).
But going to Philadelphia possibly without George Pickens (hamstring) is going to be tough this week, the Ravens are always a tough game even if the Steelers keep beating them, and they have fared poorly against Patrick Mahomes since 2018. That’s why winning the AFC North is far from a given, and as a wild-card team, it’s hard to see Tomlin getting more than a couple of first-place votes, if any. He needs to win out and really challenge for that No. 1 seed to have a shot here.
Payton and Quinn are both good stories with the rookie quarterbacks and ending playoff droughts for bad teams. But both are headed for the wild card route, and it’s not like Payton is doing this in Year 1 with a rookie quarterback. He had 2023 to start rebuilding Denver, a team that is still favored to finish as the No. 7 seed at best. But even in Quinn’s case, his defense is not the driving force behind that team. The offense is with Jayden Daniels and coordinator Kliff Kingsbury. That’s why I don’t see either of them winning this award.
As for Andy Reid, I think the Patrick Mahomes factor is still too strong with the way this team is winning with seven game-winning drives in 13 games for him to be recognized as the Coach of the Year. Frankly, the offensive plays in the red zone haven’t been good enough to justify it either, and he still forgets to run the ball too often despite the team’s issues in pass protection. Even a 16-1 record is unlikely to give him another Coach of the Year award.
Mike Macdonald (+2000) is not a bad choice if the Seahawks win the NFC West as he’s done his job of giving Geno Smith a better defense that they couldn’t get in Pete Carroll’s last several years. The Seahawks are No. 7 in points per drive allowed after ranking No. 29 last year. However, the remaining schedule is tough with the Packers, Vikings, and Rams still to come, so it’s no lock the Seahawks even make the playoffs at this point.
Jim Harbaugh was my preseason pick to win Coach of the Year, but his odds have taken a hit after recently losing to his brother John’s Ravens and getting swept by the Chiefs to lose the AFC West again. But the remaining schedule is light enough for the Chargers that 11-6 or even 12-5 is doable if they can get Ladd McConkey back and go on a run here. Harbaugh certainly deserves credit for an offense that has a league-low six giveaways and a scoring defense that allows a league-low 15.9 points per game.
But it should come down to Campbell vs. O’Connell barring a real devil luck run by Tomlin in the AFC to get the top seed. No matter who wins the NFL Coach of the Year out of these deserving candidates, the winner will have to end a long drought as Bill Belichick for the 2003 Patriots is the last coach to win Coach of the Year and the Super Bowl in the same season.
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