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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a simple formula. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic resurgence is handed the award. In practice, it fuels an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or merely the biggest upset.

But this year's race is profoundly different. The pool of contenders is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division champions fading and longtime also-rans rising collectively. Under an ordinary season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's up against multiple other elite coaches.

Below is how the projected ballot should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right system, the QB has been afforded the chance to showcase his special talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that frees wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to spin big plays out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Virtually each bet – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the immense expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a typical season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet this isn't a typical year!

Where Johnson's case comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a guarantee following his early public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller could have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed after that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still