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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple script. It commonly serves as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic improvement receives the prize. However, it creates an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or simply the biggest shock.

Yet the latest race is profoundly different. The group of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division winners declining and longtime strugglers ascending collectively. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in this wild and entertaining year, he's up against multiple other outstanding coaches.

This is how the hypothetical vote could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that springs wide-open targets consistently. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been able to create big plays from nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a typical season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. But the current is not a typical season!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the leadership aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason setback had the team wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year case has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still