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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward formula. It frequently serves as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the largest turnaround receives the award. In practice, it sparks an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent leadership or merely the most shocking surprise.

But the current competition is fundamentally unique. The group of nominees is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been messy, with recent division winners declining and recent also-rans improving collectively. In an normal year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this chaotic and fun year, he's competing with multiple other exceptional candidates.

This is how the hypothetical ballot could look.

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

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his special ability. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained excellence. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to conjure magic from nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost each decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the building with the immense hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

In a normal year, he would be the runaway choice. But this is not a typical year!

The area where his candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for long-term winning. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the off-field aspects, which was not a given following his initial public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and experience, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

Following an early strong start, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still