How This Unusual Season Broke the Conventional Coach of the Year Formula.

Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward pattern. It frequently acts as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who oversaw the largest turnaround wins the prize. However, it sparks an annual argument about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or just the biggest shock.

But this year's field is profoundly different. The list of contenders is exceptionally talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference champions declining and recent also-rans improving together. Under an normal season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this turbulent and fun season, he's up against five other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the projected vote should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, Williams has been given the opportunity to display his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an attack built solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a steady dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that springs wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to create big plays out of nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost each bet – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. But this is not a typical season!

Where his case comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained success. But Johnson falls short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has nailed the off-field stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his initial public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason setback caused the team wobbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the season in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just one spot ahead of peers.

Still