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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward formula. It often acts as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic turnaround is handed the prize. In practice, it sparks an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent coaching or just the biggest surprise.

Yet the latest competition is profoundly unique. The group of nominees is remarkably strong. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference winners declining and longtime also-rans ascending together. In an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's facing several other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the projected vote could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's consistent dominance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a steady dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when openings haven't been available, he's been able to create big plays out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the immense pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a ordinary year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. But the current isn't a typical campaign!

Where Johnson's case runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But he falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the intangibles aspects, which was not a certainty after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an early strong beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason setback had the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. He receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

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