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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple formula. It frequently acts as a kind of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who oversaw the largest turnaround receives the prize. In reality, it fuels an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or just the biggest surprise.

But this year's race is fundamentally different. The group of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with reigning division winners falling away and recent underperformers improving in unison. During an ordinary year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's facing multiple other elite coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been given the chance to display his special ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an attack built solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide-open targets consistently. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to conjure big plays out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually each bet – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the building with the level of hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a ordinary year, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet the current is not a normal campaign!

Where Johnson's case comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. However Johnson falls just short here.

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

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

Every Coach of the Year argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

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