Despite leading one of the NFL’s most dramatic culture turnarounds, Bears head coach Ben Johnson received just one Coach of the Year vote — and it undersells the job he did in Chicago.
It was a ridiculously competitive field for the AP NFL Coach of the Year award at this year’s NFL Honors.
Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson was being pitted against the very best in the business.
You had two coaches playing in Super Bowl LX on Sunday — Mike Vrabel and Mike Macdonald. Liam Coen, who won 13 games as a first-year head coach and got the Jacksonville Jaguars back into the playoffs. And Kyle Shanahan, who has been known for years as one of the best coaches in football.
It was truly a gauntlet of a field. And while I feel passionately about Johnson’s case, there were a number of very deserving candidates among that group.
One of them was Vrabel, who turned a 4–13 Patriots team into a juggernaut now sitting at 17–3 overall and representing the AFC in the Super Bowl.
Spoiler alert: Vrabel won the award. It’s the second time he’s received the honor, having previously won it in 2021 during his tenure in Tennessee.
I don’t have a single issue with that.
But once the full voting results were revealed, it became hard to ignore just how badly Johnson was snubbed.
Only one voter selected Johnson as their Coach of the Year.
That was by far the fewest of the five finalists. Vrabel received 19 votes, Coen had 16, Macdonald earned eight, and even Kyle Shanahan picked up six.
And again — these are all tremendous head coaches.
But Johnson and Coen weren’t just overcoming football adversity. They were trying to change culture.
The Seahawks, Patriots, and 49ers all have recent winning histories. Those are organizations built on established habits and institutional stability.
Chicago had none of that.
Johnson doesn’t get nearly enough credit for how much he overhauled with the Bears.
During the 2024 season, the Bears were such a disaster that ownership made an uncharacteristic midseason firing. A defensive coordinator was being raided by the FBI at Halas Hall in the middle of the season. Defensive players were celebrating and taunting opposing fans before games were over — only for those distractions to directly contribute to losses.
The offensive coordinator actively sabotaged the quarterback, then leaked slanderous comments to the media that led to hit pieces and “diva” allegations aimed at a rookie QB. The same old Bears stereotypes had resurfaced, and they needed to be disproven before anyone would believe otherwise.
Johnson inherited one of the worst offensive lines in the league, then transformed it in a single offseason — all while installing an entirely new offensive system.
And he didn’t just survive. He thrived.
He assembled an all-star coaching staff. He developed Caleb Williams into an overnight NFL superstar. He got an entire locker room — and an entire city — to buy into his message. And he did it while navigating injuries and constant on-field adversity.
Comeback after comeback, the Bears defied expectations throughout the season. That’s the truest reflection of great head coaching.
So no — maybe Johnson didn’t need to win Coach of the Year.
But finishing a distant fifth behind coaches who were operating on far more stable ground doesn’t properly reflect the magnitude of what he accomplished — or the respect he deserved.