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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward formula. It commonly functions as a form of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who oversaw the largest turnaround is handed the award. In practice, it creates an annual debate about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or merely the most shocking shock.

But the latest field is fundamentally unique. The pool of nominees is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners fading and longtime also-rans rising in unison. In an typical season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a chaotic and thrilling season, he's up against five other elite candidates.

This is how the ideal vote ought to look.

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

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a steady dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to spin big plays from broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a normal season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current is not a normal year!

Where Johnson's case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained success. However Johnson falls short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the off-field aspects, which was not a given following his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and experience, he hired first-timers. From the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

After an initial hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

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