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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple formula. It frequently functions as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign projections.

In theory, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the largest resurgence receives the prize. In practice, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or simply the most shocking shock.

Yet the current competition is fundamentally unique. The list of candidates is unusually talented. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division winners falling away and longtime also-rans rising in unison. In an normal season, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a wild and entertaining year, he's facing multiple other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the projected vote ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a steady dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to create magic out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the level of hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a ordinary season, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet the current isn't a typical season!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But he falls short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has nailed the off-field stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and experience, he hired first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an initial strong start, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

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

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the season in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still