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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward script. It commonly acts as a form of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who orchestrated the largest improvement wins the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or merely the biggest upset.

Yet the latest field is fundamentally different. The group of candidates is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners falling away and recent underperformers ascending collectively. During an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. But in such a turbulent and thrilling year, he's facing multiple other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the ideal ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to showcase his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme rather than going rogue. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a steady helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open targets all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been capable to create magic out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current is not a normal year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for sustained winning. But he falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has masterminded a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

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

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted newbies. From the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial hot start, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A midseason collapse had the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year case has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just one place ahead of peers.

Still