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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward formula. It frequently serves as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the coach who engineered the biggest improvement wins the award. However, it sparks an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior leadership or just the biggest shock.

However this year's competition is fundamentally unique. The group of nominees is exceptionally talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division champions declining and recent also-rans ascending in unison. Under an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and fun season, he's up against multiple other outstanding candidates.

This is how the ideal ballot ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his rare talent. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to create magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost each bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a typical season, he would be the runaway choice. Yet the current is not a normal season!

The area where his candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term success. But he falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a certainty after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching mix of new ideas and experience, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason collapse caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still