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

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

In theory, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the largest turnaround receives the prize. In reality, it fuels an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or merely the biggest shock.

But this year's competition is fundamentally different. The pool of nominees is exceptionally talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division winners declining and longtime underperformers improving together. During an ordinary season, a coach leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this wild and entertaining season, he's facing five other elite candidates.

This is how the ideal vote could look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper system, the QB has been given the opportunity to display his special ability. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that frees wide-open targets consistently. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to spin big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a normal year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet this is not a normal campaign!

Where Johnson's case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However he falls just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has masterminded a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall 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 notably, he has excelled at the off-field aspects, which wasn't a certainty after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff blend of new ideas and experience, Coen hired newbies. From the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A midseason collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

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

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still