How This Bizarre Season Redefined the Typical NFL Coach of the Year Mold.

Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward formula. It often serves as a form of apology. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a direct path: the coach who oversaw the biggest turnaround wins the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior coaching or merely the greatest upset.

But this year's competition is profoundly unique. The list of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners declining and longtime also-rans improving in unison. During an ordinary season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and fun year, he's competing with several other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the hypothetical vote should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been afforded the chance to showcase his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide-open targets consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been able to spin magic out of broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost every decision – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the organization with the level of expectations Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

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

The area where his case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But Johnson falls short here.

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

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has excelled at the leadership stuff, which wasn't a given following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching blend of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. From the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet he has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

After an initial hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason collapse caused the team wobbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

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

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the season in October. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still