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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple formula. It often serves as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your squad in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who orchestrated the largest resurgence wins the award. In practice, it creates an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent leadership or merely the most shocking shock.

Yet this year's competition is distinctly unique. The group of nominees is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners declining and recent also-rans ascending collectively. During an ordinary season, a coach leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a chaotic and entertaining season, he's facing multiple other elite coaches.

Here is how the projected vote ought to shake out.

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

Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to spin magic from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the building with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. But this is not a normal season!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for long-term winning. However Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, he has excelled at the off-field stuff, which was not a given following his initial public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled everyone and all elements together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Each Coach of the Year case has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed after that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still