Who ya got for Coach of the Year?
The only thing we know for certain about this year’s NFL Coach of the Year race is Kevin O’Connell will not be repeating.
The Vikings coach currently leads one of only two teams that made the playoffs last season and are under .500 this year. Washington, which is 3-8 after reaching the NFC title game in Year 1 under Dan Quinn, is the other.
As for the flip side of these two one-year flops, a whopping eight coaches were leading teams that missed the playoffs last year and were .500 or above entering Week 13. They are:
- New England (4-13 to 10-2 and the AFC’s top seed).
- Jacksonville (4-13 to 7-4).
- Chicago (5-12 to 8-3 heading into Friday’s game at Philadelphia).
- Carolina (5-12 to 6-6).
- San Francisco (6-11 to 8-4).
- Dallas (7-10 to 6-5-1 after Thursday’s win over the Chiefs).
- Indianapolis (8-9 to 8-3).
- Seattle (10-7 to 8-3).
Four of the eight head coaches above are in their first year with their current team: Mike Vrabel, a former coach of the year in Tennessee, in New England; and first-year head coaches Ben Johnson in Chicago, Liam Coen in Jacksonville and Brian Schottenheimer in Dallas.
There’s a long way to go in this race, but there certainly isn’t a lack of qualified front-runners to take the torch from K.O.
My top two at this point: Vrabel and Johnson.
Are the Bills a playoff team?
Buffalo (7-4) heads to Pittsburgh (6-5) hoping that the second of four road games in five weeks doesn’t further sink its chances of a seventh straight playoff bid. The Bills are 2-3 on the road and coming off 10 days of rest since their loss at Houston. Buffalo came into this week clinging to the seventh and final playoff spot in the AFC. After facing a Steelers team that’s 4-2 at home, Buffalo returns home for Cincinnati before heading to New England, which is 4-2 at home, and Cleveland, which has Myles Garrett, his 18 (and counting) sacks and a home upset of the Packers under its belt. To put the Bills’ six-year playoff streak in a perspective that local fans can understand, the last time the Vikings made the playoffs six straight years was 1973-78, a run that saw them lose three Super Bowls in six years.
Stat of the week
86.1: Bo Nix’s 22nd-ranked passer rating as he leads Denver (9-2) into Washington (3-8) with a chance to win a ninth straight game to reach 10 wins for the second time in two seasons since being the sixth of six quarterbacks drafted in the first 12 picks in 2024. Nix is a gritty and well-groomed winner playing for a complete team. It doesn’t matter that his passer rating is a notch below benched Saints QB Spencer Rattler (88.1) and four below benched Jets QB Justin Fields (89.5).
