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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a simple script. It frequently acts as a kind of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who engineered the biggest improvement wins the award. In reality, it sparks an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or merely the most shocking surprise.

However this year's competition is profoundly unique. The pool of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division winners declining and longtime also-rans improving in unison. During an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in this wild and fun season, he's up against five other exceptional candidates.

This is how the hypothetical ballot ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his special ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been able to create big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Almost each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a normal year, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet this is not a typical season!

The area where Johnson's case runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure 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 defensive heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained success. However he falls short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the intangibles stuff, which was not a certainty after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching blend of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year setback had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still