2026-27 NFL Coach of the Year Odds Tracker

• Get the latest odds to win the 2026-27 NFL Coach of the Year award
• John Harbaugh is the NFL COY favorite
• Track how the NFL COY odds change throughout the course of the 2025-26 NFL season

The Associated Press has been handing out an NFL Coach of the Year award since 1957. They’ll do it again in the 2026-27 NFL season, and there are a number of teams with new, intriguing head coaches. Below, you’ll find the latest odds to win the 2026-27 NFL COY award, with the ability to compare the odds across multiple sportsbooks, as well as a look at how the Coach of the Year odds have changed since opening.

NFL Coach of the Year Award Odds & Favorites

John Harbaugh is given the best odds to win the 2026-27 NFL Coach of the Year award. Harbaugh’s, who is the new head coach of the Giants after his 18-year tenure with the Ravens ended following last season, odds are listed at +500. These odds imply he has a 16.7% chance to win the award. If you bet $20 on the Giants’ new head coach, your potential profit would be $100 while returning $120.

The top NFL Coach of the Year contenders are:

1. John Harbaugh, Giants (+500 consensus odds)
2. Jesse Minter, Ravens (+750)
3. Joe Brady, Bills (+950)
4. Robert Saleh, Titans (+950)
5. Kellen Moore, Saints (+1200)

Top 8 All Contenders Top 16

While John Harbaugh only won one Super Bowl in his 18 seasons with the Ravens, he turned the team around immediately. Baltimore posted a 5-11 record the season prior to hiring Harbaugh, and he coached them to an 11-5 record in his first season. He enjoyed 11 double-digit win seasons over those 18 years, and only posted a losing record in three of them. Based off his history of success with the Ravens, it’s easy to understand why Harbaugh is the favorite as he takes over a 4-13 Giants team, who already have some good, young pieces to build around.

It’s also worth noting that Harbaugh won Coach of the Year in 2019.

Not far behind in the Coach of the Year odds is Jesse Minter, the man who takes over for Harbaugh in Baltimore. Baltimore’s defense was horrible against the pass last year, ranking 30th in passing yards allowed, which led to them being 18th in points allowed and 24th in total yards allowed. Minter spent last season running a Chargers defense that ranked 5th in total yards allowed and 9th in points allowed.

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Here are some more notes on the movement we have seen:

• [February 20] NFL Coach of the Year odds for the 2026-27 season opened on February 20, and favored John Harbaugh, who takes over a Giants team that struggled, partly due to injuries to key players, last season. Harbaugh was given short +500 odds at opening, with Jesse Minter (+750), Joe Brady (+950), and Robert Saleh (+950) rounding out the top contenders.

Looking for the latest NFL odds? – Get current spreads, totals, and moneyline odds for all upcoming games this week here.

NFL Coach of the Year Betting Strategy

The NFL Coach of the Year award is not always awarded to the best head coach in the league. Often, it goes to the coach who turned around a bad team early in his tenure, or one whose team still won a lot of games while playing without some of their stars.

It’s hard to predict which coaches will see their teams suffer through some bad injury luck, which is why Coach of the Year odds are among the most volatile of all award futures, but it is easy to identify the candidates to turn around bad or underachieving teams. This is why we saw John Harbaugh, who takes over a struggling Giants team, Jesse Minter, who will look to fix up a Ravens team who underachieved last season, and even Todd Monken, who assumes the head coaching role for the Browns, all open with short odds.

So, with that in mind, I have a couple rules I follow when betting NFL Coach of the Year:

1. Beware betting any of the favorites, especially early in the year/season – looking to the 2025 season, Mike Vrabel, who won COY, was among the favorites at opening, given +875 odds, but his odds worsened to +1350 after Week 1, and then to +2000 after Week 3. These odds are extremely volatile. One loss can dramatically shift the odds. We also saw Shane Steichen absolutely running away with this award over the first half of the season, being offered at near-even odds at the midway point, only to completely fall off in the second half.
2. Target coaches early in their tenure, but don’t assume every team will turn around its fortunes – it would be silly to ignore coaches taking over a bad team, but we need to understand certain situations are not fixed immediately, or ever with certain coaches. With that said, sportsbooks don’t give every first-year coach short odds, nor do they always give short odds to coaches coaches whose teams are coming off bad seasons.
3. Injuries can provide Coach of the Year betting opportunities – I know it’s difficult to see a star player being hurt as anything other than devastating when it happens. However, coaches like Kevin Stefanski have won COY awards because of overcoming injury to star players, while Kyle Shanahan nearly accomplished the feat last year as well.
4. Narrative is a factor, but wins are essential in winning COY – since 1991, only one coach has won the award without their team winning double-digit games. That was Brian Daboll in 2022, which was his first season as head coach, when his Giants went 9-7-1. This was a massive improvement from losing double-digit games each of the last five seasons, and he also made Daniel Jones look good for the first time in his career. So, you need to identify a coach that is going to win games.

With all of that in mind, I am passing on John Harbaugh at his very short opening odds. I am confident we can get better odds later on after his team faces some very probable adversity. And while I do really like Jesse Minter’s chances of winning the award, I also think his odds are a little too short right now – I’ll be watching as more sportsbooks open their odds.

There are three coaches I think present value right now: (1) Kevin Stefanski at +1400, (2) Shane Steichen at +2500, and (3) Ben Johnson at +2200.

I think the Bucs losing Liam Cohen as their play-caller is going to continue to hurt them into the 2026 season, and prevent them from breaking away from being a decent/good team. So, I see the NFC South as wide open, and I believe there are some good pieces there for Stefanski to work with. If he can get more consistent play out of Michael Penix Jr, while leaning on Bijan Robinson in his run-heavy offense, I think the Falcons can take the division.

Had Daniel Jones not gotten hurt around the midway point of the season, Shane Steichen very well may have won Coach of the Year. With the Colts’ season crumbling after Jones got hurt, Steichen still has a lot of room for improvement in 2026.

While there isn’t a ton of room for improvement with Ben Johnson’s 11-6 Bears from last season, I think there’s still enough of a narrative when it comes to sustaining success in Chicago for Johnson to still be in the running this year. If he continues to hold off his divisional foes, while getting Caleb Williams to take another step forward, I think he’ll be a top contender.

List of First-Year Head Coaches in the NFL

The following coaches are assuming NFL head coaching duties for the first time in their career:

• Jesse Minter, Baltimore Ravens
• Joe Brady, Buffalo Bills
• Todd Monken, Cleveland Browns
• Klint Kubiak, Las Vegas Raiders
• Jeff Hafley, Miami Dolphins
• Mike LaFleur, Arizona Cardinals

Then the following coaches have previously served as a head coach in the NFL, but are entering their first season as head coach of a new team:

• John Harbaugh, New York Giants
• Robert Saleh, Tennessee Titans
• Mike McCarthy, Pittsburgh Steelers

Past Coach of the Year Winners

The 2021-22 NFL season was the first time we saw the regular season schedule expanded to 18 weeks, with each team playing 17 games. This is why you see the extra game in all the COY winners since that season.

We have not seen a coach win the honor in back-to-back years since Joe Gibbs in 1982 and 1983.

Since 1991, all but one NFL Coach of the Year winner has led their team to at least ten wins in taking home the honor. The lone winner without ten wins was Brian Daboll three seasons ago, whose Giants only went 9-7-1. Daboll’s turnaround was still significant enough, as he took over a team that went 4-13 the previous season and made a QB who had firmly been labeled a bust look very serviceable.

The only other notable from that streak above is Bruce Arians, who led the Colts to a 9-3 record as head coach after taking over for Chuck Pagano after he stepped away for health reasons. The Colts did still win 11 games, though.

Archived NFL Coach of the Year odds:

• 2025
• 2024
• 2023
• 2022
• 2021
• 2020
• 2019