The Way This Unusual Campaign Broke the Traditional NFL Coach of the Year Blueprint.

Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward formula. It commonly functions as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct path: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement is handed the award. In practice, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or simply the greatest surprise.

Yet this year's field is fundamentally different. The pool of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been messy, with reigning division champions declining and recent underperformers ascending collectively. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining year, he's competing with several other elite coaches.

This is how the hypothetical ballot ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when openings haven't been available, he's been able to create magic from nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a typical year, he would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current isn't a typical season!

Where Johnson's case runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term winning. But he comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, Coen has excelled at the leadership aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback had the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the season in October. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still