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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward formula. It commonly serves as a form of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who orchestrated the largest resurgence receives the award. In practice, it fuels an annual argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or simply the greatest shock.

But the current competition is distinctly unique. The pool of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division champions fading and recent strugglers ascending in unison. Under an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in this wild and entertaining season, he's facing several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the hypothetical vote ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. From 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 dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system rather than freelancing. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure magic out of nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Almost every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. But the current is not a normal campaign!

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously fickle. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. But he comes up just short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the leadership aspects, which wasn't a certainty following his initial press conference appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching blend of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position 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 figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the season in October. Instead, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him just a single spot ahead of peers.

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