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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward formula. It commonly functions as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your squad in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a direct path: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic resurgence is handed the award. In reality, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or just the greatest surprise.

However the current field is profoundly different. The pool of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference champions fading and recent also-rans rising in unison. During an ordinary season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a turbulent and thrilling year, he's competing with multiple other elite candidates.

This is how the hypothetical vote could look.

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

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to display his rare ability. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of freelancing. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that frees wide-open targets consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been able to spin big plays out of nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a normal season, he would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current is not a typical year!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term winning. However Johnson falls short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the intangibles aspects, which was not a guarantee following his early public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. From the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three 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) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still