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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It frequently acts as a kind of apology. Sorry we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a direct path: the coach who engineered the biggest resurgence receives the award. In reality, it creates an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or merely the greatest surprise.

But the latest competition is profoundly different. The list of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference champions fading and recent underperformers improving collectively. During an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and entertaining season, he's up against multiple other elite coaches.

This is how the ideal vote could look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right system, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his special ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to spin big plays from broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the organization with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, he would be the runaway choice. But this isn't a typical campaign!

The area where his case comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. 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 two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for sustained success. However Johnson comes up just short here.

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

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the off-field stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. From the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse had the team wobbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

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