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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It commonly acts as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic turnaround receives the prize. In reality, it sparks an annual argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or simply the most shocking surprise.

However this year's race is distinctly different. The pool of contenders is exceptionally strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference champions declining and recent underperformers ascending collectively. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this chaotic and thrilling season, he's up against several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote ought to be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system rather than improvising. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been able to spin magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has worked. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the building with the level of expectations he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

In a typical year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But the current is not a typical year!

Where his candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But he falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the off-field stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his early public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking reliable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still