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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward script. It commonly acts as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

In theory, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who oversaw the most dramatic turnaround wins the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior coaching or just the most shocking upset.

But this year's race is distinctly unique. The pool of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with recent division winners declining and longtime strugglers ascending in unison. During an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this turbulent and thrilling year, he's competing with multiple other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right system, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his special talent. From midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than improvising. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide-open targets everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to create magic out of nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Almost every gamble – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of hype Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive wizard but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a normal season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current isn't a normal campaign!

The area where his case runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

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

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen trusted newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason setback had the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are evident. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him just one spot ahead of peers.

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