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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward formula. It commonly acts as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest turnaround receives the award. However, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or merely the most shocking upset.

However this year's competition is profoundly unique. The pool of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning division champions fading and recent strugglers rising in unison. Under an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in such a wild and thrilling year, he's facing multiple other elite candidates.

This is how the hypothetical ballot ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more confident, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than going rogue. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to spin magic from broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the building with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a normal year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current is not a typical season!

The area where his candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for sustained winning. However he falls short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the off-field stuff, which was not a guarantee after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff blend of youth and experience, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off after that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still