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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward formula. It commonly serves as a kind of apology. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the biggest turnaround is handed the award. In reality, it sparks an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly honoring superior coaching or merely the greatest upset.

But this year's competition is profoundly different. The pool of candidates is remarkably strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference winners declining and recent strugglers ascending collectively. In an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. But in this chaotic and entertaining season, he's facing multiple other outstanding coaches.

This is how the ideal vote should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's consistent excellence. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the system rather than improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a innovative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. 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 every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the kind of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current is not a typical campaign!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained success. But he falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the off-field aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and everything together.

Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The results are clear. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year argument has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

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