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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a simple formula. It frequently serves as a form of apology. We regret we got wrong your squad in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who oversaw the largest resurgence receives the prize. In reality, it sparks an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent leadership or merely the biggest surprise.

However the latest competition is distinctly unique. The group of candidates is exceptionally deep. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been messy, with reigning conference champions fading and longtime strugglers improving collectively. Under an typical season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in such a wild and thrilling year, he's facing five other elite candidates.

This is how the hypothetical ballot ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent performance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers consistently. The QB has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to create big plays out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet this is not a normal year!

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which was not a certainty after his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. From the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an early strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He gets the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still