The Way This Bizarre Season Shattered the Conventional Coach of the Year Mould.

Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward formula. It commonly acts as a kind of apology. We regret we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence receives the prize. In practice, it creates an annual argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or just the biggest shock.

Yet this year's field is profoundly different. The group of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners falling away and longtime strugglers ascending collectively. During an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in this chaotic and fun year, he's up against multiple other elite candidates.

Here is how the hypothetical vote could shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters love QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been capable to create magic out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the kind of hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a typical season, he would be the runaway favorite. But the current isn't a normal season!

Where Johnson's case runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. However he comes up just short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the intangibles aspects, which was not a guarantee after his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted newbies. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an initial hot start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still