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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward formula. It frequently serves as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who engineered the most dramatic turnaround receives the prize. However, it creates an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or merely the biggest upset.

Yet the latest race is fundamentally different. The group of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference winners falling away and longtime also-rans improving collectively. Under an typical season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling season, he's up against multiple other outstanding candidates.

This is how the ideal vote ought to shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged excellence. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been able to spin big plays from broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Virtually every decision – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the organization with the kind of hype Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a normal season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But this isn't a typical season!

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But Johnson comes up short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

After an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A midseason setback had the team stumbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

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

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still