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

Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It often functions as a form of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the biggest turnaround receives the prize. In practice, it creates an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or just the biggest surprise.

Yet this year's field is distinctly unique. The group of nominees is exceptionally talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been messy, with reigning conference winners declining and recent also-rans ascending collectively. Under an ordinary year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in this chaotic and thrilling season, he's competing with five other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the projected ballot should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare 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 prolonged excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been capable to conjure magic out of broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost every decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a ordinary season, he would be the runaway favorite. But the current isn't a normal season!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. But Johnson falls just short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given following his early public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

After an initial strong start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting reliable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. He receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Each Strong of the Year case has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has regressed after that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still