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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple formula. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your team in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who engineered the largest resurgence is handed the prize. In practice, it fuels an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or simply the greatest shock.

However the latest competition is distinctly unique. The pool of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been messy, with recent division champions declining and longtime also-rans improving together. In an normal year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this wild and thrilling season, he's competing with multiple other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his special ability. From Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's consistent dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure big plays out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the organization with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. Yet the current isn't a normal season!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained success. However Johnson falls short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

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

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching blend of youth and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. From the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

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

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still