The Way This Bizarre Season Shattered the Conventional Coach of the Year Formula.

Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple script. It commonly serves as a kind of apology. We regret we got wrong your squad in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the most dramatic turnaround receives the award. In practice, it creates an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or just the greatest upset.

Yet the current competition is fundamentally unique. The list of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference champions fading and recent strugglers ascending collectively. During an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's competing with five other elite coaches.

Below is how the ideal ballot ought to shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system rather than freelancing. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide receiver targets everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure big plays from nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a normal year, he would be the overwhelming choice. But the current is not a normal season!

The area where his candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously fickle. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. But he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a certainty after his initial press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff blend of youth and experience, Coen hired newbies. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players 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 AFC's number three playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year argument has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of peers.

Still