How The Unusual Season Shattered the Typical Coach of the Year Formula.

Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward formula. It often acts as a form of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the largest improvement is handed the award. However, it creates an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or simply the biggest surprise.

Yet the latest competition is distinctly unique. The pool of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions falling away and longtime underperformers ascending together. Under an typical year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining season, he's facing several other elite coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper system, the QB has been given the chance to display his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of going rogue. It is an attack built solely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that springs wide-open targets consistently. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

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

Where his candidacy runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for sustained winning. However Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has excelled at the off-field aspects, which was not a certainty after his initial public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff blend of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. But he has pulled everyone and all elements together.

Following an early hot start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. He gets the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still