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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward formula. It often functions as a form of apology. Sorry we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a direct path: the coach who engineered the most dramatic turnaround wins the prize. In reality, it fuels an annual argument about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or just the greatest shock.

But the current race is profoundly unique. The group of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning conference winners declining and longtime strugglers improving collectively. During an typical year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in such a wild and thrilling season, he's up against multiple other elite candidates.

Here is how the ideal ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his special ability. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. Under his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an offense constructed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been capable to spin magic out of nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the building with the immense hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet this is not a normal campaign!

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which was not a given following his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen trusted newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

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

Every Coach of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still