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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple formula. It often serves as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who oversaw the biggest improvement receives the award. However, it fuels an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or simply the greatest shock.

But the current field is fundamentally unique. The list of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division winners declining and recent underperformers ascending in unison. In an typical season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's competing with five other outstanding coaches.

This is how the ideal ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, Williams has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than freelancing. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to create magic from nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Almost each decision – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. But the current isn't a normal campaign!

Where Johnson's case comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. However he comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has nailed the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. From the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements into sync.

Following an early hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The results are clear. The Jags 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 roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Each Strong of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has regressed after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still