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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward formula. It commonly serves as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who orchestrated the largest improvement is handed the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or merely the most shocking shock.

But this year's field is profoundly different. The group of contenders is remarkably strong. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference champions declining and longtime also-rans improving in unison. During an normal year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining year, he's up against five other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been capable to spin big plays out of nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost each bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the immense hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a normal year, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this isn't a normal campaign!

Where his candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. However Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a rapid resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles aspects, which was not a certainty following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. From the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A midseason setback caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

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

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has regressed since that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still