5 top candidates for Coach of the Year

Coaching.

A mysterious mix of strategy and intuition, structure and psychology. Design, installation, adjustment. Repeat.

It’s managing the talents of dozens of players and assistants and somehow blending all those personalities and skill sets together to lead
to the thing that allows you to keep your job.

Winning.

And at the end of each season, somebody gets celebrated for doing it better than anyone else. While winning is an important factor in deciding who that is, it isn’t the only thing in choosing the CFL’s Coach of the Year.

Starting out West and moving East, here are five candidates for 2025 COY.

BUCK PIERCE | BC LIONS

Buck Pierce is in his first year as head coach of the BC Lions (Jimmy Jeong/CFL.ca)

Just a month and a half ago, you wouldn’t have put Buck Pierce on a list of candidates who might win the Coach of the Year award but things have changed a lot since the BC Lions dropped consecutive games to Toronto and Ottawa in very disappointing fashion. At that point, the team was 5-7 and sinking like a sunset.

But now, the Lions are arguably the hottest team in the CFL (hello, Montreal), having won five straight to move to 10-7 and in position to nail down a home field date in the Western Semi-Final.

Having one of the MOP favourites at quarterback helps.

But there’s more to it than that, of course, and the man in charge has steered his team through its mid-season identity crisis, emerging on the other side as a Grey Cup contender.

DAVE DICKENSON | CALGARY STAMPEDERS

Dave Dickenson has led his Stampeders to a 10-7 record through 20 weeks of the season (Daniel Crump/CFL.ca)

Where you at, “Dave Dickenson needs to be fired” crew, circa 2024?

Calgary’s head coach has done a remarkable job of resurrecting the Stampeders not once but twice in 2025.

Expectations were modest at the outset of this season but Dickenson had his team ready to play — and dominate — in the early going, racing out to an 8-3 start including three wins over Winnipeg and two over Saskatchewan.

Then came the stumble.

Four straight losses followed a OK Tire Labour Day Weekend victory and Calgary could have slip-slided away at that point. But they have not, since rebounding with consecutive victories.

Through the losing streak, Dickenson barely wavered in his support for his team, bemoaning the results but not the efforts.

And his Stampeders have responded, now sitting at 10-7.

COREY MACE | SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDERS

Corey Mace was nominated for Coach of the Year in 2024 (CFL.ca)

You could consider Corey Mace the front-runner for this award as those who guide their team to the top of the charts almost always are.

With a record of 12-5, Mace and the ‘Riders are just that — the top team in the entire league — with a berth in the Western Final in hand.

The Roughriders have barely made any missteps in 2025 and that is despite Mace and his staff having to negotiate a spate of injuries to top receivers throughout the season.

The coach’s calling card, as a premier defensive mind, has been on display with his team holding down the number one position in weekly defensive rankings every single week since Week 10.

Currently, the Saskatchewan defence has a total of 26 rankings points (the lower the number the better) and the next best total belongs to the Montreal Alouettes with 40.

SCOTT MILANOVICH | HAMILTON TIGER-CATS

Scott Milanovich has guided the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to a 10-7 record and currently sit at the top of the East Division (Arthur Ward/CFL.ca)

From the beginning of the 2025 season, Scott Milanovich has kept his team mostly heading north, deftly mixing in a couple of needed course corrections along the way.

That included a rather important one almost straight off.

A team which had notoriously begun the previous three seasons in losing fashion (0-5, 0-3, 0-4) began this one with two straight losses and things could have easily spun out of control in a “here we go again” kind of way.

However, Milanovich got his team right and they sped forward with six consecutive wins to build the belief.

A mid-season streak of three losses was put in the rearview mirror with the three wins that followed and now Milanovich has his team one win away from a regular season East Division title after missing the playoffs entirely last year.

JASON MAAS | MONTREAL ALOUETTES

Jason Maas was awarded Coach of the Year honours in 2024 (Graham Hughes/CFL.ca)

Perhaps no head coach in this group has faced more adversity than Jason Maas.

In a season of injuries on both sides of the ball, Maas has seen his team through the mid-year gloom of a 2-7 stretch, including five losses in a row at one point.

It was more than just the loss of starting quarterback Davis Alexander, for two months, that hampered the Als and Maas.

Receivers Tyson Philpot and Austin Mack went down for a stretch as well and so too did defensive star safety Marc-Antoine Dequoy, to name a few.

Guiding his team to the other side of that storm, Maas now has the Als at 10-7 and positioned as arguably the hottest team in the CFL (hello, BC), as five straight wins have earned them the right to a home playoff date, with a shot at maybe even hosting the Eastern Final.

5 top candidates for Coach of the Year

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