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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a simple formula. It frequently serves as a form of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence wins the prize. However, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or merely the greatest shock.

Yet this year's race is profoundly different. The pool of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division winners falling away and recent underperformers ascending collectively. In an ordinary season, a coach leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this chaotic and entertaining season, he's up against five other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot should shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right system, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his special talent. From Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a steady helping of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure magic from nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost each gamble – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current is not a normal year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. But Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has excelled at the leadership aspects, which wasn't a guarantee after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and experience, he trusted newbies. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But Coen has pulled everyone and all elements together.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

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