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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple formula. It commonly functions as a form of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign projections.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence wins the prize. In practice, it creates an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or merely the biggest upset.

However the current field is fundamentally unique. The pool of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning division winners falling away and recent strugglers improving collectively. During an typical season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this chaotic and fun season, he's facing multiple other outstanding coaches.

This is how the hypothetical vote ought to look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, Williams has been given the chance to display his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than improvising. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme wizard but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a typical year, he would be the runaway choice. Yet this is not a typical campaign!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the leadership stuff, which was not a certainty after his initial public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed 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 Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

Following an initial strong start, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still