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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a type of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your team in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement wins the prize. However, it sparks an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or merely the most shocking surprise.

Yet the current race is profoundly unique. The list of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference champions falling away and recent underperformers improving together. In an normal season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's facing five other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote should look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to display his rare talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been able to conjure big plays from broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Almost each decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the organization with the level of pressure he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a ordinary year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this is not a typical campaign!

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. However Johnson comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership stuff, which was not a certainty after his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an early hot start, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the track. A midseason setback had the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year argument has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still