Veteran players are starting training camps this week and the preparations for the 2022 NFL season are now in full swing. While the main target for all players and coaches is to win games, make the playoffs and win the Super Bowl, there are a number of individual accolades that can come their way as a by-product of achieving, or getting close to achieving, their main goals. One of those is the NFL Coach of the Year award, and that’s what we’ll be putting under the spotlight in this article.
The award generally goes to a coach who leads his team to a season that exceeds expectations by the greatest distance, whether that is a team that was expected to struggle which makes the playoffs, or one that was expected to be pretty good which ends up having a dominant year.
Looking at the list of recent winners, it seems a double-digit win total is going to be required, so we’re on the hunt for a team that could at least make the playoffs. Tennessee’s Mike Vrabel won the honor last season after leading the Titans to the #1 seed in the AFC, and he hadn’t even been in the top half of the odds list at the start of the season. The year before Kevin Stefanski got the award after turning the once bottom-feeding Browns into playoff contenders, following John Harbaugh’s win after the Ravens went 14-2 the year before. Taking this trophy doesn’t guarantee long-term survival for a coach, though, with 2018 winner Matt Nagy already fired by the Bears. Let’s take a look at the leading odds for this year’s NFL Coach of the Year award.
Let's take a look at the odds and the best bets to be made.