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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a simple formula. It commonly acts as a type of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the biggest improvement receives the award. In reality, it creates an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or merely the biggest surprise.

But this year's competition is profoundly unique. The pool of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning division winners fading and longtime underperformers rising together. In an typical year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a wild and entertaining season, he's facing multiple other elite coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical vote ought to be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his special talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the system rather than going rogue. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to conjure magic out of broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

In a normal year, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this isn't a typical season!

Where his case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. However he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his early public appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and experience, he hired newbies. From the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

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

Every Strong of the Year argument has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still