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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple formula. It frequently acts as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who engineered the biggest resurgence receives the prize. In reality, it fuels an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent coaching or merely the biggest shock.

Yet the current race is distinctly different. The group of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division champions declining and longtime underperformers rising in unison. Under an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and thrilling season, he's facing several other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the projected vote ought to be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his special talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an attack constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that creates wide-open targets consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been capable to create big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Almost every bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a ordinary year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. But the current is not a normal season!

The area where his candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which was not a certainty after his initial public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted newbies. From the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still