How This Strange Season Broke the Typical Coach of the Year Formula.

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward script. It often serves as a kind of apology. Sorry we underestimated your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who engineered the biggest turnaround is handed the prize. However, it creates an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or simply the biggest surprise.

But the latest field is distinctly different. The pool of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference champions declining and longtime underperformers rising together. Under an typical year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a wild and entertaining season, he's facing five other elite coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical vote should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than going rogue. It is an offense built solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that springs wide receiver receivers consistently. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to create big plays from nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet this is not a normal season!

Where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his early public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But Coen has pulled everyone and all elements together.

After an initial hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason setback had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He receives the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still