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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple formula. It often functions as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement wins the prize. In reality, it creates an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or simply the biggest upset.

Yet this year's race is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning division champions declining and recent also-rans rising together. Under an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in this wild and thrilling year, he's competing with multiple other outstanding candidates.

This is how the ideal ballot could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a creative aerial game that springs wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to spin big plays out of nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Almost each decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the building with the kind of expectations he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a ordinary year, he would be the overwhelming choice. But this isn't a normal season!

The area where his case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term winning. But he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which was not a guarantee after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal staff mix of youth and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars 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 their job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach recentered the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He receives the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still