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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple formula. It often serves as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest resurgence wins the award. However, it sparks an annual debate about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding superior leadership or just the biggest shock.

However the current field is fundamentally unique. The group of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been messy, with reigning division winners falling away and recent also-rans rising together. In an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's competing with multiple other exceptional coaches.

This is how the hypothetical ballot could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right system, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his special talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost each bet – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the building with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this is not a typical season!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. However he falls short here.

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

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has mastered the leadership aspects, which was not a given following his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. From the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A midseason collapse caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still