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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple formula. It often acts as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest turnaround is handed the award. In practice, it fuels an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or merely the biggest surprise.

However the current competition is fundamentally unique. The group of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning conference champions falling away and longtime also-rans rising together. In an typical season, a coach leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a chaotic and entertaining season, he's facing several other exceptional candidates.

This is how the hypothetical vote ought to look.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged dominance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system rather than improvising. It is an offense constructed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a innovative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings weren't there, he's been capable to spin magic from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Almost every bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the immense expectations he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a normal year, he would be the runaway choice. Yet the current isn't a normal season!

Where his case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However he falls just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his early public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff mix of youth and experience, he bet on first-timers. From the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the team wobbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still