How This Bizarre Season Redefined the Typical Coach of the Year Mold.

Usually, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple script. It commonly serves as a type of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a direct path: the coach who orchestrated the largest turnaround wins the award. In practice, it fuels an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or simply the most shocking shock.

However the latest field is profoundly unique. The list of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division champions declining and recent strugglers ascending in unison. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a wild and entertaining season, he's up against several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the projected vote should look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right system, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that frees wide receiver targets consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been able to create big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the building with the level of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

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

The area where his case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for long-term success. However Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has masterminded a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has nailed the off-field aspects, which was not a given after his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal staff mix of new ideas and experience, he hired first-timers. From the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback had the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the season in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still