How This Unusual Season Shattered the Typical NFL Coach of the Year Mould.

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple formula. It frequently acts as a type of apology. Sorry we got wrong your squad in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic improvement is handed the prize. However, it fuels an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or merely the greatest shock.

Yet the current competition is fundamentally unique. The list of contenders is exceptionally strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions fading and recent strugglers rising in unison. During an typical season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's competing with multiple other elite coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a innovative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to spin big plays from nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Virtually each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. Yet this isn't a normal year!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for sustained success. But he comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the leadership aspects, which wasn't a certainty following his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. From the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an early hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year argument has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still