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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward script. It frequently serves as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your squad in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who orchestrated the largest resurgence wins the prize. In reality, it sparks an annual debate about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or merely the biggest shock.

However the latest field is fundamentally unique. The group of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning division winners fading and longtime strugglers improving together. During an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a wild and thrilling season, he's competing with five other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than going rogue. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a steady helping of play-action and a creative passing attack that springs wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to spin magic from broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the building with the kind of pressure he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive wizard but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical season, he would be the runaway favorite. But the current is not a normal season!

The area where his candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term success. However Johnson comes up short here.

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

Coen is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a given following his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and all elements into sync.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are clear. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest deduction 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, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him just one place ahead of peers.

Still