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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward formula. It frequently serves as a type of apology. We regret we got wrong your team in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who oversaw the largest resurgence wins the award. In practice, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or just the most shocking upset.

Yet the current race is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference winners falling away and longtime strugglers rising collectively. During an ordinary season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and thrilling year, he's facing five other elite candidates.

Here is how the projected ballot could be structured.

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

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged excellence. With his guidance, Williams has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to conjure magic from broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the immense pressure Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current isn't a normal campaign!

Where his case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for long-term success. But Johnson falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has nailed the leadership stuff, which was not a given following his initial press conference appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and experience, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

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

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still