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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward formula. It commonly acts as a type of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who engineered the biggest resurgence wins the prize. In reality, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or merely the greatest shock.

However this year's competition is fundamentally different. The pool of nominees is exceptionally deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions declining and longtime strugglers rising in unison. In an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this chaotic and fun season, he's up against multiple other elite candidates.

Below is how the projected vote could look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his special talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to conjure magic from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost each bet – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a typical season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current is not a typical year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for sustained winning. But he falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback 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 NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the off-field stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching mix of youth and experience, Coen hired first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A midseason setback caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Strong of the Year argument has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still