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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward formula. It often acts as a kind of apology. Sorry we misjudged your team in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the largest improvement receives the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent leadership or just the biggest surprise.

Yet the current field is profoundly unique. The group of candidates is exceptionally strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions falling away and recent underperformers rising collectively. In an typical season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and fun season, he's competing with multiple other elite candidates.

Below is how the ideal vote could look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right system, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense built solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to create big plays out of nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the organization with the level of expectations he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

During a typical season, he would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current isn't a typical year!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. But he comes up just short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a rapid turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles stuff, which was not a given after his initial public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. From the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. But he has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an early strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the season in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off after that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of peers.

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