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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward formula. It frequently acts as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement receives the award. In reality, it creates an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or simply the biggest upset.

However the current competition is fundamentally different. The list of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been messy, with recent conference champions fading and recent also-rans ascending in unison. In an ordinary year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and fun year, he's competing with multiple other elite coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent excellence. Under his guidance, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a steady helping of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been able to spin big plays from broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the organization with the immense hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a typical season, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But the current is not a typical year!

Where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term success. But Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the off-field aspects, which wasn't a certainty following his initial public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching blend of youth and experience, Coen bet on newbies. From the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

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