The Way This Strange Season Broke the Typical Coach of the Year Blueprint.

Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who oversaw the most dramatic resurgence is handed the prize. However, it creates an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or just the most shocking surprise.

However the current race is profoundly unique. The pool of candidates is remarkably deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been messy, with reigning conference champions falling away and longtime strugglers ascending collectively. In an typical year, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a turbulent and thrilling season, he's facing multiple other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot could look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to display his otherworldly ability. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's consistent excellence. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an offense constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to spin big plays out of nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. But this isn't a typical season!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

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

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. From the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason setback caused the team wobbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still