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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward formula. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic resurgence wins the prize. In reality, it creates an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or merely the greatest surprise.

Yet the latest competition is profoundly different. The list of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions falling away and recent also-rans improving in unison. In an normal season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and fun year, he's competing with several other elite candidates.

This is how the hypothetical ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right system, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his rare talent. From Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that frees wide receiver targets all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to create magic out of broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

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

The area where Johnson's case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list 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 couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained success. But Johnson comes up just short here.

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

Coen is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback 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 fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the intangibles aspects, which was not a given after his initial public appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. But he has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

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

Every Strong of the Year case has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still