From Wikipedia on the F-15:

“The United States Air Force selected McDonnell Douglas's design in 1967 to meet the service's need for a dedicated air superiority fighter. The Eagle first flew in July 1972, and entered service in 1976.”

So the F-15 took five years from contract to first flight and four more to get it into production.

Grumman was selected for the contract award in January 1969. First flight was achieved in December of 1970. A remarkable two year achievement. Well, maybe not so remarkable ...

From Wikipedia on the F-111 and F-14:

“Lacking experience with carrier-based fighters, in 1962 General Dynamics teamed with Grumman for the assembly and testing of the F-111B aircraft. In addition, Grumman would also build the F-111A's aft fuselage and the landing gear.”

“With the F-111B program in distress, Grumman began studying improvements and alternatives. In 1966, the Navy awarded Grumman a contract to begin studying advanced fighter designs.”

So the reality is that Grumman started on the F-14 design four years before first flight, and borrowed a great deal from the F-111 design and development three years before that.

Back to FARA. If first flight is to occur in 2023, that means there is only 33 months remaining to design and build a near production aircraft. Adding to schedule and manpower hurdles, both Sikorsky and Bell are working on FLARA production designs, and the country is in the middle of a pandemic.

Should be easy, right?

Not sure of that, my answer would be too few. We now have a situation where obviously deficient designs such as the F-35 go forward, because these is no alternative.
Imho, the 'last supper' was a disastrous mistake, because it saddled the US with an industry that has all the inflexibility of a nationalized business together with the short sightedness that is endemic to Wall Street oriented CEOs.

Although Grumman did benefit from the F-111B, the F-14 was not just a revised F-111B, it was a new design that shared some common concepts with it. For example, like the F-111 it had a variable sweep wing, but it was a new design. Just look at the way they did the pivot points. BTW, four of the submitted designs also featured variable sweep wings. Everyone was working on new designs because it was obvious the F-111B was not going to be able to handle the air superiority, escort or attack roles. The Navy's basic wants were finalized in November of 1967 after discussion with a number of companies, not just Grumman, and they received permission to go forward with the solicitation in June of 1968 (everything was faster then!). The thing that really accelerated everything was the 1967 Domodedovo air show., so everyone would have had to meet the same schedule. I might point out that if the F-111B helped Grumman a tremendous amount, then certainly it would have helped GD even more since it was their design, but they never even made it to the final cut. The other finalist was MDD.

Grumman, like everyone else was sniffing for a contract for some time. They figured there would be a need for a new Navy true fighter but so did everyone else except GD itself. Seven years before the F-14's first flight puts it a year before the F-111A's first flight and almost two years before the F-111B, so at that point they didn't realize yet just how much trouble was coming. I might point out that the F-15 was also developed with what we would call remarkable speed, just not so much. This is not unique to these planes. For CVNs, from contract award to having a ship in the ready for tests we could have one every four years (even faster before we had to dedicate the only dock big enough to RICOH instead of also using it alongside the other dock for construction). However, because of the way we run these programs, it takes at least seven. The Ford situation is hopefully unique and illustrates the problem when your expertise ages out. Same thing is starting to happen to the Virginias.

Using the FLRAA, back in 2015 Bell said they thought they could achieve LRIP/IOC with what would be the V-280 by 2025 with an aggressive program, I believe Sikorsky implied the same. We're looking, though, at at least four more years beyond that. This for a craft that we've already been working on this for at least five years and the first of the two finalists flew 2 1/4 years ago. I fear that anything that takes this long runs the risk of being delayed to the point where it just withers away. I also fear what stretching these out does to our industrial expertise base. So you can see why I'm not a fan of stretching out FARA. The requirements are not that big a push beyond wat we have now as so we should move on it soonest. There's also the consideration that if we add two years to FARA, we run into the possibility of its funding spike starting to overlap that of FLRAA, which could be a big problem for both of them in getting to production.

Sikorsky is committing suicide by pursuing a design they have not been able to make work. Boeing will be damaged. The US military may end up with one supplier.

It was risky enough to select X2 technology for FLRAA, now there are two programs with X2. Way not to go Army. Get it working on one program first.

You failed to mention that the F-14 reused the F-111 engines. Not having to work through parallel development of a new engine and aircraft was a huge leg up for Grumman. And you can’t dismiss that having a engineering team coming right off the F-111 B onto the F-14 was not a big help. Not dismissing the Grumman engineers busted their butts and did a good job. But this aircraft’s two years period between contract award and first flight should not be viewed as a yardstick for other programs.

Also realize that FARA will also be doing a parallel development for both the aircraft and a new GE engine. Never a good plan for new aircraft development.

I agree that the attention span of our government and its unwillingness to commit to properly funding an aircraft development program is problematic. It has been the primary cause of new aircraft program delays and cost overruns. Although our government’s elected officials prefer to blame contractors for their own failures.

Starting at MCAIR in St Louis four decades ago, I was lucky to have learned what it takes to build an aircraft from a clean sheet from the best in the business. I also learned that unnecessary compressed schedules result in bad engineering compromises.

Bell is a safe bet. It's proven technology, so is less of a risk than a coaxial configuration from a contractor who has no experience of such a design. I see Bell doing well across both competitions and although there is a feeling that the U.S wants to keep two key defence contractors going I don't think that will matrelise here. I'm unconvinced Boeing made a real effort here and I think given their current issues they will concentrate on current product line up rather than opening themselves up for an embarrassing competition failure with lack of consumer confidence is a prime factor.

i always wondered why the Boeing copter was not tapered towards the cockpit area - I mean, the greenhouse is a wide as the fuselage itself! How will the C/CP be able to see outside to the left and right? Moot point now, that the downselect has occured.

Ah, but it wasn't that I failed to mention the execrable TF30 engines. The Navy's VFX (which became the F-14), like the Air Force's FX (which became the F-15) was directed to be designed around the in development IEDP (Initial Engine Development Program) engine, which would be furnished as GFE. This became the F100-PW-100 for USAF and the higher thrust, lower (dry) fuel burn but a bit "draggier" F401-PW-400 for USN. Because the USN needed their fighter sooner and everything else could be developed faster than the engines, the decision was made to build the first 69 (and maybe just the first 13) with the TF30 as the F-14A, as much of the flight testing could be accomplished with the lower thrust TF30s and operational F-14s (including some re-engined F-14As) would have the F401 and be the (original) F-14B. For a number of reasons, including some hinky actions by the Air Force, the F401 was canceled and the F-14A, plagued by the TF30, became the main production version. It was sort of like putting the EMD F-15 into production rather than fully developing it into the superb aircraft it became.

The point is that every bidder had the option to design their aircraft to have the versatility to use the TF30 as an interim engine during development pending arrival of the IDEP.

Regarding your point about FARA. There is apparently no off-the-shelf engine that will meet the Army's needs, there not having been a lot of work in this arena absent a program that could use it. No contractor is willing anymore to spend gangs and gangs solely of their own money to develop something like this without a guaranteed market. So in 2006 Army set up the Advanced Affordable Turbine (AATE) program which in 2009 morphed into the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) to replace the T700 in a number of applications (it may also be used on the AH-64), telling all FARA respondents they had to design their craft to be powered by a single ITEP engine. That competition was eventually won in February 2019 by GE with their T901 which had been running since at least 2017, so the engine is further along than the IDEP was during the VFX/FX days. We'll see.