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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple formula. It commonly serves as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence wins the award. However, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or simply the biggest surprise.

Yet this year's race is distinctly unique. The list of candidates is exceptionally deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been messy, with recent conference champions declining and recent underperformers improving collectively. In an typical season, a coach leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's facing multiple other elite candidates.

This is how the projected ballot ought to be structured.

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

Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the opportunity to display his special talent. From Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to conjure magic out of nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But this is not a typical campaign!

Where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up just short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership stuff, which was not a certainty following his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff blend of youth and experience, Coen hired newbies. From the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But he has pulled everyone and all elements together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the team wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year case has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, 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 defined it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single place ahead of peers.

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