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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a simple script. It often functions as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the largest turnaround wins the prize. However, it fuels an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring superior coaching or simply the biggest upset.

Yet the current competition is profoundly different. The list of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been messy, with reigning division winners declining and recent underperformers ascending in unison. Under an ordinary year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's facing multiple other exceptional candidates.

Below is how the ideal vote ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a steady helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open targets consistently. Williams has capitalized. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been capable to spin big plays out of nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Virtually each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a ordinary season, he would be the clear-cut choice. But this is not a typical year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for long-term success. However he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

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

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. From the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a possibility that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. 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 one spot ahead of peers.

Still