How The Strange Season Broke the Typical NFL Coach of the Year Blueprint.

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward script. It commonly acts as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who engineered the largest resurgence is handed the prize. In practice, it sparks an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or simply the biggest surprise.

However this year's competition is distinctly different. The group of contenders is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with recent division winners falling away and longtime also-rans improving together. In an typical season, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling season, he's facing multiple other elite candidates.

This is how the projected vote should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been given the chance to display his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's prolonged excellence. Under his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme instead of going rogue. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to spin big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost each bet – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the building with the immense pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme dork but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a normal season, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But this isn't a normal campaign!

Where Johnson's case comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for sustained success. But Johnson comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. From the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year case has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still