Every year I watch bettors pile onto the shortest name on the NFL Coach of the Year board, and almost every year that name loses. It is the favorite I fade most comfortably in football futures: the coach the market loves in July is rarely the coach holding the trophy at NFL Honors. The 2026 season is two games in after Wednesday's opener in Seattle and Thursday's game in Melbourne, and the board has already started to move, so below is the sportsbook board as of Wednesday afternoon, what the exchange money did around those first two games, the voting pattern that keeps burning the chalk, and where I think the real value is hiding.
The Quick Answer
- John Harbaugh (New York Giants, +600) is still the 2026 NFL Coach of the Year favorite at DraftKings after taking over a 4-13 team, but favorites almost never cash this award.
- The Exchange Disagrees. On Kalshi, Jesse Minter is the favorite at 13 cents bid and 15 cents asked, and Harbaugh sits second at 11 and 12.
- The Real Money Is Under Robert Saleh And Klint Kubiak. Each carries more than 34,000 contracts resting on the bid at 5 cents on Kalshi. Mike Macdonald's jump to a 2-cent bid is a quote with 112 contracts behind it, and Kellen Moore, the exchange's third choice, has 15 contracts under his price.
- The Award Is A Turnaround Market. Eight of the last ten winners led a team that had a losing record the year before, and the class improved by nearly six wins on average.
The full exchange board, the Thursday 5:01 p.m. print I keep coming back to, and the worst-to-first table that explains it are below.
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The 2026 NFL Coach Of The Year Odds
Here is the DraftKings board as of Wednesday afternoon, September 9, hours before the season opener, per the FOX Sports odds desk. These are futures, so they move all season as narratives shift, but the shape of the market is what matters:
| Coach | Team | Odds |
|---|---|---|
| John Harbaugh | New York Giants | +600 |
| Jesse Minter | Baltimore Ravens | +1000 |
| Robert Saleh | Tennessee Titans | +1000 |
| Kellen Moore | New Orleans Saints | +1200 |
| Ben Johnson | Chicago Bears | +1200 |
| Brian Schottenheimer | Dallas Cowboys | +1300 |
| Klint Kubiak | Las Vegas Raiders | +1500 |
| Todd Monken | Cleveland Browns | +1800 |
| Mike McCarthy | Pittsburgh Steelers | +1800 |
| Joe Brady | Buffalo Bills | +1900 |
| Kevin O'Connell | Minnesota Vikings | +2000 |
The most interesting line on the board is still the one at the top. John Harbaugh was let go by Baltimore after 18 seasons and immediately took over a Giants team that went 4-13 in 2025, and the market made him the favorite at +600 in July and held him there into the opener. That is the classic Coach of the Year trap: a big name plus a bad team feels like a turnaround waiting to happen, so the price gets bid down to a number that no longer pays you for how hard this award actually is to win. The second most interesting move is quieter: Minter, who opened shorter than Saleh, has drifted out to the same +1000, and Kubiak has come in from +2000 to +1500 without his team playing a down.
What The Exchange Money Did After The First Two Games
The sportsbook board tells you what the books think. The Kalshi board tells you what people are actually paying, and more importantly what they are willing to pay, because an exchange shows you the resting bids under every name. In the 24 hours ending Friday morning this market traded roughly 160,000 contracts, about 11.5% of the 1.38 million it has traded in its entire life, and the prices that moved did not all move for the same reason.
Here is the exchange board as I read it Friday morning, September 11, at 9:19 a.m. ET. The September 3 column is the midpoint we recorded on our Kalshi Coach of the Year board before the season started. Resting size is the number of contracts sitting on the best bid at that moment, which is a snapshot, not a history.
| Coach | Team | Kalshi bid / ask | Sept. 3 price | Resting on the best bid | Contracts traded, 24h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jesse Minter | Ravens | 13¢ / 15¢ | 12.5¢ | 709 at 13¢ | 9,072 |
| John Harbaugh | Giants | 11¢ / 12¢ | 11.5¢ | 2,067 at 11¢ | 1,315 |
| Kellen Moore | Saints | 9¢ / 10¢ | 8.5¢ | 15 at 9¢ | 11,683 |
| Brian Schottenheimer | Cowboys | 7¢ / 8¢ | 8.5¢ | 2,560 at 7¢ | 840 |
| Kevin O'Connell | Vikings | 6¢ / 11¢ | 4.5¢ | 42 at 6¢ | 8,707 |
| Aaron Glenn | Jets | 6¢ / 7¢ | 5.5¢ | 38,205 at 6¢ | 12,697 |
| Ben Johnson | Bears | 6¢ / 9¢ | 4.5¢ | 105 at 6¢ | 1,379 |
| Klint Kubiak | Raiders | 5¢ / 6¢ | 5.5¢ | 38,708 at 5¢ | 12,597 |
| Robert Saleh | Titans | 5¢ / 6¢ | 5.5¢ | 34,046 at 5¢ | 16,927 |
| Todd Monken | Browns | 4¢ / 5¢ | 3.5¢ | 23,512 at 4¢ | 684 |
| Kyle Shanahan | 49ers | 3¢ / 8¢ | 2.5¢ | 332 at 3¢ | 11,331 |
| Mike Macdonald | Seahawks | 2¢ / 6¢ | 1.5¢ | 112 at 2¢ | 13,063 |
| Andy Reid | Chiefs | 1¢ / 2¢ | 2.5¢ | 1,799 at 1¢ | 22,010 |
| Sean McVay | Rams | no bid / 2¢ | 1.5¢ | none | 9,870 |
Read the resting-size column before you read the price column, because it sorts this board into two very different groups.
The moves with real money behind them. Robert Saleh and Klint Kubiak both printed at 4 cents on Wednesday, a cent and a half under the 5.5-cent midpoint they held on September 3. Then at 5:01 p.m. ET on Thursday, three and a half hours before kickoff in Melbourne, sweep orders hit both: 15,883 Saleh contracts at 5 cents filled in a single second, and 11,220 Kubiak contracts at 5 cents filled 19 seconds later. What matters more than the sweep is what was left behind. As of Friday morning, 34,046 contracts are resting on the Saleh bid at 5 cents and 38,708 on the Kubiak bid at the same price. Aaron Glenn is the third member of that group: 13,051 contracts bought at 6 cents in the 1 p.m. hour Wednesday, another 10,142 at 7 cents at noon Thursday, and 38,205 now resting on his bid at 6 cents. Todd Monken had 15,437 contracts bought at 4 cents in that same Wednesday 1 p.m. hour and now has 23,512 sitting on his bid. Saleh, Kubiak and Monken are first-year coaches inheriting two of the three worst records in football and a 5-12 Browns team, which is exactly the profile the pattern section below says wins this award. Glenn is the odd one out: he is in his second year with the Jets and the 3-14 was his own, so his fit with the pattern is a bounce-back rather than a turnaround, and the second-biggest resting bid on the board sits under the weakest pattern case. Whoever is behind these orders is not chasing. The bids sit a cent under the last print, waiting to get filled.
The moves that are just a quote. Mike Macdonald is the loudest paper move on the board. He printed at 1 cent through Thursday and at 2 cents in the small hours of Friday, and his quote at 9:19 a.m. was 2 cents bid, 6 cents asked, which reads like a coach whose price jumped. Look at the book. There are 112 contracts on the bid at 2 cents and 1,000 at 1 cent. Everything that traded in the last 24 hours, 13,063 contracts, was buyers hitting offers at 1 and 2 cents, including 3,608 in a single print at 2:30 a.m. Friday, and the bid under all of that buying is 112 contracts. Seattle did win the opener, 13-10 over New England at Lumen Field on Wednesday night, but a 14-3 team winning at home by three is not a Coach of the Year story, and nobody is bidding like it is. Kyle Shanahan is the same shape with a real result attached: after the 49ers beat the Rams 27-7 in the Rams' home game in Melbourne on Thursday, roughly 6,600 contracts were bought at 3 cents during the fourth quarter and another 2,343 at 4 cents Friday morning, and his quote is 3 bid, 8 asked with 332 contracts on the bid. When I first pulled the book 20 minutes earlier the ask was 7 cents and 38 contracts deep, and it was gone by the second read. A 5-cent spread on a coach whose team went 12-5 last year is a market with no opinion. Kevin O'Connell, the 2024 winner, is tied for the widest spread on the board at 6 bid, 11 asked. He walked from 5 cents to 9 on Wednesday afternoon, 11,488 contracts in the 3 p.m. hour alone, and has 42 contracts resting on his bid. The Vikings have not played yet.
The favorite that fell without much selling. Kellen Moore is the one that changes how I read the top of the board. He ran from 7 cents on Tuesday to 12 on Thursday morning on steady buying, printed at 11 in the afternoon, and then a few hundred contracts of small selling Thursday night, 618 in total, sent the price straight to 9 bid, 10 asked. It went there because there was nothing underneath. As of Friday morning there are 15 contracts resting on the Moore bid at 9 cents and 355 at 8, against 5,068 offered at 10. Nearly all of the 11,683 contracts that traded in the last day were takers paying up, and the price fell two cents the moment the buying paused. Compare that with Saleh, where a seller would have to hit 34,000 contracts to move the price one cent. Moore looks like a mover on the sportsbook side; on the exchange he is a name with no floor.
Jesse Minter and Andy Reid round out the read. Minter is the exchange favorite and was bought up to 15 cents in two 3,146-contract prints at 8:33 a.m. Friday, but there are 19,208 contracts offered at 15 and 10,026 more at 16, a seller's wall that says the market is happy to keep supplying Ravens optimism at that price. Reid is the most traded name on the whole board over the last day, 22,010 contracts, and almost all of it came in one 11:49 p.m. Thursday sweep that took 19,847 contracts at 2 cents in three prints. Our Kalshi Coach of the Year board, written before the season, made the case that nobody was buying Reid at 2.5 cents; Thursday night somebody did, and the quote is now 1 bid, 2 asked with 6,075 contracts offered at 2. Kansas City has not played yet, so I read it as a lottery ticket on a 6-11 team with a Hall of Fame coach rather than a signal.
Why The Favorite Rarely Wins Coach Of The Year
Coach of the Year is not an award for the best coach. It is an award for the biggest positive surprise, and surprises are the one thing the betting favorite is not.
The mechanics are simple. A panel of voters hands out the award, and voters reward the story that beat expectations the hardest, usually the team that jumped from bad to good in a single season. The moment a coach becomes the preseason favorite, the market has already priced his team to be good, so a strong year only meets expectations instead of blowing past them. Mike Vrabel, last year's winner, walked into a 4-13 Patriots team; the market was not asking him to win 14 games. John Harbaugh at +600 is being asked to fix a 4-13 Giants team in front of everyone, with the price already assuming he will, and the exchange tells the same story one rung down: the 19,208 contracts offered against Minter at 15 cents are sellers betting that a good Ravens season is priced in.
The favorite is the safe story; the winner is the surprise. If you want the mechanics of how a season-win number gets set and why the market misprices these turnaround teams, our NFL win totals guide breaks down the same futures math this award rides on.
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The Worst-to-First Pattern
If the favorite is the trap, the pattern is the map. Look at who has actually won this over the last decade and one profile jumps off the page: a coach who took a losing team and won a lot more games than anyone expected.
| Season | Coach | Team | Record | Prior Year | Win Jump |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Mike Vrabel | Patriots | 14-3 | 4-13 | +10 |
| 2024 | Kevin O'Connell | Vikings | 14-3 | 7-10 | +7 |
| 2023 | Kevin Stefanski | Browns | 11-6 | 7-10 | +4 |
| 2022 | Brian Daboll | Giants | 9-7-1 | 4-13 | +5 |
| 2021 | Mike Vrabel | Titans | 12-5 | 11-5 | +1 |
| 2020 | Kevin Stefanski | Browns | 11-5 | 6-10 | +5 |
| 2019 | John Harbaugh | Ravens | 14-2 | 10-6 | +4 |
| 2018 | Matt Nagy | Bears | 12-4 | 5-11 | +7 |
| 2017 | Sean McVay | Rams | 11-5 | 4-12 | +7 |
| 2016 | Jason Garrett | Cowboys | 13-3 | 4-12 | +9 |
The single loudest row is the most recent one. Mike Vrabel walked into a Patriots team that had gone 4-13, went 14-3, and won going away with a 10-win improvement, the biggest turnaround by any winner in this ten-year stretch. He was a first-year hire on a bad roster, which is the exact profile this award keeps rewarding. Eight of these ten winners inherited or led a team coming off a losing season, the group improved by nearly six wins on average, and five of them were in their very first year with the club.
Notice who is missing from the winning profile: the coach everyone already respected on a team everyone already liked. The two exceptions on the list, Harbaugh in 2019 and Vrabel in 2021, both led teams that were already good and simply stayed great, and both needed a dominant record to break through. That path is the hard way to win this award, and it is worth remembering when you look at where the 2026 chalk lives. It is also why the Macdonald and Shanahan quotes above are noise: a 14-3 Seahawks team and a 12-5 49ers team winning in Week 1 is the Vrabel 2021 path, and the exchange bids say nobody wants to pay for it.
Where The 2026 Value Is
So point the pattern at the board. The play is not the favorite and it is not the new coach walking into a good team; it is the longer-priced coach inheriting a bad 2025 roster with a reason to jump.
Jesse Minter (+1000 at DraftKings, 13 to 15 cents on Kalshi) is a first-year hire, and the Ravens did go 8-9 and miss the playoffs in 2025, so on paper he fits the turnaround shape too. The catch is the roster: Baltimore is a far more finished team than the ones below it, with a franchise quarterback already in place, so a bounce-back to the playoffs is closer to par than a genuine shock, which is why the book prices him alongside Saleh rather than as a true longshot, and why the exchange has a 19,000-contract wall of sellers at 15 cents. The number I keep coming back to instead is Robert Saleh at +1000 with the Titans. Tennessee was one of the league's worst teams in 2025, used the No. 1 overall pick on quarterback Cam Ward, and now hands a defense-first, experienced head coach a young passer entering year two. Bad prior year, first-year coach, a plausible big win jump: that is the Vrabel and Daboll template almost line for line, at 10-to-1 instead of the favorite's 6-to-1. And now I can add the piece I did not have in July: the Thursday 5:01 p.m. sweep and the bid still resting under him at 5 cents mean that somebody with real size read the same table and reached the same name.
Further down, Klint Kubiak (+1500) is the dart-throw version of the same idea: a first-year coach on a 3-14 Raiders team with room to climb, and the bid under him at 5 cents is the biggest resting order on the board. Aaron Glenn is the one I hold at arm's length. The Jets money is real, but a second-year coach improving on his own 3-14 is a bounce-back, and the table above shows the award goes to the new hire far more often than the incumbent who fixes his own mess. On the exchange you can sell into a shorter price without the award ever settling; a sportsbook ticket only pays if the coach actually wins. At +1500 on Kubiak, or roughly +1329 on Glenn's 7-cent ask, where only 7 contracts sit and any real size pays 8 cents (about +1150), one of them being the season's breakout story pays for a lot of misses. Spend your futures dollars where the turnaround math, the price, and the money that is actually willing to hold the ticket all line up, rather than on a favorite the base rate says will lose.
One honest caveat on the price itself. A 6-cent Kalshi ask is about +1567 before the exchange's trading fee, which runs about 0.4 cents per contract at that price, so on Saleh the exchange is offering a longer number than the +1000 at DraftKings, while on Minter it is the other way around: 15 cents is roughly +567 against +1000 at the book. A longer price is not automatically the better bet, since the two contracts can carry different settlement rules, but on the one coach where the resting money is thickest, the exchange happens to be paying more for the same outcome.
How To Bet NFL Coach Of The Year The Smart Way
Because this is a longshot market, the price you get matters more than usual, and that is where most bettors quietly bleed value. A futures ticket is a bet you hold for months, and the same coach almost never carries the same number at DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, and Caesars, so shopping the line is not optional.
Here is the math that makes the case. A price of +1000 implies about a 9% chance to win (100 divided by the payout-plus-stake of 1,100). A price of +900 implies about 10%. That gap looks tiny, but on a longshot you hold all year, taking +900 at one book when Saleh is +1000 at another is real edge you hand back for free. It matters even more here because award futures carry a huge hold: a book has to price roughly 32 coaches into one market, so the built-in margin (the vig) is far fatter than a standard game line. The way you beat that hold is to find the best number across books and compare it to the no-vig fair price, not to guess.
OddsShopper automates exactly that manual work. Concretely, three habits give you an edge in this market:
- Shop Every Book, And The Exchange. Line-shopping is what OddsShopper is built for: its odds screen lines up DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Caesars, and the rest side by side so you take the best available number instead of the first one you see. On this board the gap is not theoretical: Saleh is +1000 at DraftKings and about +1567 at Kalshi's 6-cent ask, while Minter is +1000 at the book and roughly +567 on the exchange. Same coach, same award, hundreds of points apart.
- Check It Is Actually +EV. Portfolio EV de-vigs the book's market and tells you whether your best number beats the no-vig fair odds. On Saleh that is the difference between the 9% the +1000 implies and the 6% the exchange ask implies, before the exchange fee; one of those two prices is wrong, and the resting bids say which side the money is on.
- Bet The Turnaround Early. Award prices on a longshot coach collapse the moment his team starts winning. Kubiak already came in from +2000 to +1500 before the Raiders played a game, and Minter drifted from +900 to +1000 while his exchange price rose. The value on a worst-to-first coach is fattest now, before the wins arrive to shorten the line.
Treat these tickets as a small futures portfolio rather than one big swing. For the broader timing and line-shopping framework, our NFL betting strategy guide covers the same principles applied to sides and totals, and if you are still getting comfortable reading plus-money prices, start with how to bet on the NFL. If you want to see what our handicappers are actually backing this week before you build the portfolio, the free expert picks today page is where their public plays sit.
The one-line versionthe odds screen finds you the best number on a coach, and Portfolio EV tells you if that number is +EV. Try OddsShopper free for 7 days, then use code NFLCOY20 for 20% off OS Pro or OS Core.
The Bottom Line
The NFL Coach of the Year board is really a bet on surprise, and surprise is the one thing the favorite cannot sell you. The trophy has gone, over and over, to the coach who took a losing team and dragged it somewhere nobody expected, which is why the +600 name at the top is usually the number to bet against, not on. Two games into 2026 the prices that jumped, Macdonald and Shanahan, are quotes with nothing under them, and the prices that barely moved, Saleh and Kubiak, have the bids I walked through above waiting underneath. One market flickered and one market decided. Find the coach whose roster, quarterback, price, and resting money all point at a jump, and get the best number before the wins arrive.
Ready to shop the board the smart way? Try OddsShopper free for 7 days and use code NFLCOY20 for 20% off OS Pro or OS Core, then let the odds screen and Portfolio EV find the futures prices the books have wrong.
More on this: NFL Picks Hub: Week 1 Odds, Win Totals, Props · NFL Coach Of The Year Odds: Nobody Is Buying Andy Reid · NFL Hot Seat Odds: Why Kalshi Money Piled On Mike Vrabel · Patrick Mahomes NFL Comeback Player: Kalshi Odds · NFL Defensive Rookie Of The Year Odds: The Safety Problem
