The Way This Strange Season Broke the Conventional NFL Coach of the Year Mold.

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple script. It frequently serves as a type of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic turnaround wins the prize. However, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or just the most shocking surprise.

Yet this year's field is profoundly unique. The pool of candidates is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with reigning conference winners declining and recent also-rans rising collectively. During an ordinary year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling year, he's competing with multiple other outstanding coaches.

This is how the ideal ballot could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly 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 run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide receiver receivers consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to create magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

In a ordinary season, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this is not a normal season!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained success. However he comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the intangibles aspects, which was not a given following his early public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. From the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But Coen has pulled everyone and all elements together.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year case has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still