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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple formula. It often functions as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the largest turnaround wins the award. In reality, it sparks an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or simply the most shocking surprise.

Yet the current field is distinctly different. The pool of nominees is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions declining and longtime underperformers ascending together. Under an ordinary season, a coach leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a chaotic and fun year, he's competing with five other exceptional candidates.

This is how the hypothetical vote should look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system rather than going rogue. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide-open targets consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to create big plays from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the building with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this is not a typical year!

Where his case comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a given following his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff blend of youth and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still