Behind only the Kansas City Chiefs, who, of course, won the Super Bowl, the Houston Texans probably had the second best week of any team in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago. At the Thursday night NFL Honors ceremony, not only was Andre Johnson named a 2024 Hall of Famer, but the Texans’ top two rookies, C.J. Stroud and Will Anderson, took home Offensive and Defensive Rookie of the Year honors.
Lost in the shuffle is the fact that DeMeco Ryans came one vote away from making a special night even MORE special, as he lost the NFL Coach of the Year award to Cleveland’s Kevin Stefanski on a tiebreaker. The two of them finished with the same number of total voting points (165 total), but Stefanski won the award because he had one more first place vote than Ryans.
It was a small damper on a special season for Ryans and the Texans, and I don’t think there’s a single Houstonian who would trade Ryans for Stefanski as the head coach of our football team. Now, in the age of immediate odds from the betting sites, though, we can look ahead to the Coach fo the Year award for NEXT season already.
Here are your early odds on next season’s top coach award:
Jim Harbaugh +550
Matt LaFleur +800
Raheem Morris +1000
Shane Steichen +1400
Robert Saleh +1400
Mike Macdonald +1400
Demeco Ryans +1400
Sean McVay +1800
Matt Eberflus +1800
Dave Canales +2000
A few observations here:
I think they got the favorite right
Anywhere Jim Harbaugh has gone, he’s been the master fo the quick turnaround. In fact, in his previous stint as an NFL head coach, he won the award in 2011 with San Francisco, when he took them to a 13-3 regular season record. With the Chargers, he is inheriting one fo the most talented quarterbacks in the league in Justin Herbert, and a roster with enough talent to win right now. If Harbaugh gets the Chargers back to the postseason, and Herbert is in the MVP conversation, he should win it.
DeMeco Ryans is high up the board, but winning next season will be tough
DeMeco Ryans is tied with three others for fourth on the board at +1400 odds (gamble-speak for “14 to 1”). It’s going to be far more difficult for Ryans to win it in Year 2 than it was in his first season as a head coach, where 10-7 and a division title had him one vote shy of winning. In 2024, 10-7 and a division title will barely get him votes (unless somehow he had to do that without C.J. Stroud). If you look at the list of past winners, typically there are two ways to win the award — (1) be a rookie head coach whose team had massive improvement, or (2) coach the team with the best record (or close to it) in football. Ryans no longer has the first avenue available, so instead, if he is to win it in 2024, he will likely need to go 13-4, at a minimum, against a MUCH harder schedule.
Stefanski’s absence is a direct indicator as to why he won it in 2023
Stefanski is nowhere to be seen on this odds board, despite being the winner this past season, and it’s pretty simple as to why. Stefanski was the rare outlier whose award wining season wasn’t his rookie head coaching year (although he did win it in 2020, his first year with the Browns), and the Browns, at 11-6, had a good record but not a great one. Stefanski won the award because despite massive injuries at quarterback, he won games with four different starters and made the playoffs. That’s probably not duplicatable, so Stefanski sits off the grid.
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
