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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a simple formula. It frequently functions as a kind of apology. We regret we misjudged your squad in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the coach who engineered the biggest improvement wins the prize. In practice, it creates an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or simply the biggest upset.

Yet the current field is fundamentally different. The list of candidates is exceptionally strong. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions falling away and recent also-rans ascending together. Under an normal season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining season, he's competing with multiple other elite candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot should shake out.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his special ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been able to create big plays from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost each decision – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this isn't a normal year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term success. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the leadership aspects, which wasn't a certainty after his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. From the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an early hot start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller could have ended the season in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. 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 just one spot ahead of peers.

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