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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple formula. It frequently acts as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your team in our preseason predictions.

In theory, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the largest turnaround wins the prize. In practice, it creates an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or simply the biggest surprise.

But the latest field is fundamentally different. The list of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions declining and longtime underperformers improving in unison. In an normal year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining year, he's competing with multiple other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his special ability. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to spin magic out of nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the organization with the immense expectations Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a ordinary season, he would be the runaway favorite. But the current is not a typical season!

The area where Johnson's case runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has nailed the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given after his initial public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching blend of youth and veteran savvy, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

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

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has regressed after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still