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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple formula. It commonly functions as a type of apology. Sorry we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the biggest improvement receives the prize. In practice, it creates an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or merely the greatest surprise.

However this year's race is fundamentally different. The pool of nominees is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning division champions declining and longtime also-rans rising together. During an ordinary season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this turbulent and fun season, he's up against five other outstanding coaches.

Below is how the ideal vote should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal environment, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's consistent performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an attack built solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to spin magic from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the level of hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

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

Where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

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

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching blend of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

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

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year argument has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still