The Way The Strange Season Shattered the Traditional NFL Coach of the Year Mold.

Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward formula. It commonly functions as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the largest turnaround receives the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding superior leadership or simply the most shocking shock.

Yet this year's competition is fundamentally unique. The group of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning division winners fading and longtime underperformers rising in unison. During an typical season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling year, he's competing with several other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the projected vote could shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his otherworldly ability. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense built solely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to create big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost every decision – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. But the current is not a normal season!

The area where his case comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. But Johnson falls short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his initial public appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback had the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

Each Coach of the Year case has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still