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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It commonly serves as a kind of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our preseason predictions.

In theory, it's a direct line: the skipper who orchestrated the largest turnaround wins the award. In reality, it sparks an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent leadership or simply the most shocking upset.

Yet the current race is profoundly different. The list of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division winners declining and longtime underperformers improving collectively. In an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and thrilling year, he's up against five other elite coaches.

Here is how the ideal vote ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the opportunity to display his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of freelancing. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide-open receivers consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to create magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Almost every bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the organization with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a ordinary year, he would be the runaway choice. Yet the current isn't a typical year!

The area where his case comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. But Johnson comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the off-field stuff, which wasn't a guarantee after his early public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

After an initial hot start, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. He receives the tiniest 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, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

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