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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward formula. It frequently functions as a form of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your franchise in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence wins the award. In practice, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or merely the greatest shock.

However this year's competition is distinctly unique. The pool of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners falling away and longtime also-rans improving together. During an typical year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this chaotic and thrilling season, he's competing with several other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote could look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love signal-callers. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right system, the QB has been given the chance to display his special ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than freelancing. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that springs wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when openings weren't there, he's been capable to conjure big plays from nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current isn't a typical year!

Where his case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for long-term winning. But he falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the leadership aspects, which was not a given following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, he hired newbies. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

After an early hot start, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A midseason setback had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He gets the tiniest 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, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still