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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward formula. It often functions as a form of apology. Sorry we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the coach who orchestrated the largest turnaround receives the prize. In reality, it sparks an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or simply the greatest shock.

But this year's field is profoundly different. The group of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning conference champions fading and longtime underperformers ascending collectively. During an ordinary year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this chaotic and thrilling year, he's competing with five other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the ideal ballot ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters love QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's consistent dominance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to spin big plays from broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. But this isn't a typical season!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained success. However he comes up short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

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

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching blend of youth and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. From the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

After an early strong start, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year argument has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still