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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward formula. It commonly acts as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement receives the award. However, it fuels an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent leadership or merely the biggest surprise.

Yet the latest race is distinctly unique. The list of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with recent division winners fading and longtime strugglers ascending collectively. Under an typical year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's competing with multiple other outstanding candidates.

This is how the ideal ballot should be structured.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his special talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's consistent dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open targets everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually every decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the organization with the level of hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

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

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for long-term winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around 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 Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, Coen has nailed the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his early public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching mix of youth and veteran savvy, Coen bet on newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

After an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

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

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him just one place ahead of peers.

Still