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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple formula. It frequently acts as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the largest improvement wins the award. However, it fuels an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding superior leadership or simply the most shocking shock.

But the current competition is profoundly different. The list of contenders is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with recent division champions fading and longtime underperformers improving in unison. During an ordinary year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's competing with multiple other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the projected vote should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

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

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a innovative aerial game that frees wide-open targets consistently. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been capable to spin big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually every decision – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the immense pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a typical year, he would be the runaway favorite. But the current is not a normal year!

The area where his case comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But Johnson comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has excelled at the leadership stuff, which was not a certainty following his early public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. From the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an early hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only one place ahead of other QBs.

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