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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple formula. It often functions as a form of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a direct path: the skipper who engineered the biggest resurgence is handed the prize. In reality, it creates an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or simply the most shocking shock.

But this year's race is profoundly different. The pool of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning conference winners fading and longtime underperformers rising in unison. During an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling year, he's up against five other outstanding candidates.

This is how the projected ballot should look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his otherworldly ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an offense built solely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a steady helping of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been capable to spin magic out of nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the building with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive wizard but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

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

The area where Johnson's case runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term winning. However he falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which wasn't a given following his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Coach of the Year argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still