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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a simple formula. It frequently acts as a form of apology. We regret we got wrong your franchise in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest improvement wins the award. However, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or merely the most shocking surprise.

Yet the current race is profoundly different. The group of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference winners falling away and recent underperformers rising together. In an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining season, he's facing several other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the ideal vote could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper system, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been capable to spin big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the organization with the kind of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

In a ordinary year, he would be the runaway choice. Yet this isn't a typical campaign!

The area where his candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. 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 Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term success. However Johnson comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. During 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 remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has excelled at the off-field aspects, which wasn't a given following his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A midseason collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

Every Strong of the Year argument has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still