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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple formula. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who engineered the largest resurgence is handed the award. However, it sparks an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior coaching or merely the biggest shock.

But the latest competition is profoundly different. The pool of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been messy, with recent division winners fading and recent also-rans ascending together. Under an typical season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this chaotic and thrilling year, he's up against five other elite coaches.

This is how the hypothetical ballot should look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent performance. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been able to spin big plays out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

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

The area where his case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term success. But he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the leadership aspects, which was not a given after his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff mix of youth and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

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