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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple formula. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the biggest turnaround receives the award. In practice, it fuels an annual debate about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or just the biggest upset.

Yet the current race is fundamentally different. The list of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference champions fading and longtime also-rans improving collectively. During an normal year, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's competing with five other outstanding candidates.

This is how the ideal vote should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the opportunity to showcase his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, Williams has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a steady helping of play-action and a creative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to spin big plays out of nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually each bet – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the building with the immense hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, he would be the clear-cut choice. But the current is not a typical season!

Where Johnson's case runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. 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 Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. But he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has nailed the leadership stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his initial public appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, he trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But Coen has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

After an initial hot start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still