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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a simple formula. It commonly acts as a form of apology. Sorry we underestimated your franchise in our preseason predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who oversaw the largest improvement wins the award. In reality, it creates an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior coaching or simply the greatest surprise.

But this year's competition is fundamentally unique. The list of contenders is exceptionally deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning conference champions falling away and recent underperformers improving in unison. During an ordinary season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's competing with several other exceptional candidates.

Below is how the ideal ballot ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to display his special talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of going rogue. It is an attack built solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been able to create magic out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the building with the kind of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. But this is not a typical season!

The area where his case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. But Johnson falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the leadership stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff blend of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

After an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team stumbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year case has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still