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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward formula. It often functions as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a direct path: the skipper who oversaw the largest improvement wins the prize. However, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior coaching or just the most shocking shock.

However the latest race is distinctly different. The group of contenders is exceptionally deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions declining and longtime also-rans improving together. During an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in this wild and fun year, he's competing with five other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the projected ballot ought to look.

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

Coach of the Year voters love signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers consistently. The QB has thrived. And when openings weren't there, he's been capable to create magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. But the current is not a normal year!

The area where his candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress 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 an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. However he comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has mastered the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a certainty after his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

After an early hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered 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 seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year case has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

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