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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward formula. It often serves as a form of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who oversaw the most dramatic resurgence wins the award. In practice, it creates an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or just the most shocking upset.

But this year's competition is fundamentally different. The group of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with reigning division champions falling away and longtime underperformers rising in unison. In an ordinary year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this chaotic and thrilling year, he's competing with several other elite candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his special talent. From Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action and a creative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to conjure big plays from broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the immense hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this is not a normal season!

The area where Johnson's case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. But he falls just short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has mastered the leadership aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A midseason setback had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still