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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward script. It frequently functions as a type of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who oversaw the largest turnaround wins the prize. In practice, it creates an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or merely the most shocking upset.

Yet the current race is fundamentally different. The group of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning conference winners falling away and longtime strugglers improving in unison. During an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in this chaotic and thrilling season, he's facing five other outstanding coaches.

This is how the hypothetical vote ought to be structured.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a creative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been able to create magic out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the building with the kind of pressure Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

In a ordinary year, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet this is not a normal season!

Where Johnson's case runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term success. But he comes up short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has masterminded a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has excelled at the off-field stuff, which was not a given after his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and experience, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the track. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are clear. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away 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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