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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple script. It frequently acts as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement wins the prize. In reality, it sparks an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior leadership or simply the biggest surprise.

But the current field is distinctly different. The group of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with recent division champions falling away and recent underperformers ascending in unison. Under an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this wild and fun season, he's facing several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper system, the QB has been given the chance to display his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack built entirely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a steady dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that springs wide-open targets all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings weren't there, he's been capable to spin magic from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every decision – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the building with the kind of hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a normal year, he would be the runaway choice. Yet this is not a typical year!

Where his case comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for sustained success. However Johnson comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has masterminded a swift resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall ball 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.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the off-field aspects, which was not a given after his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. From the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

Following an early hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the season in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle 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 latter part of the schedule, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

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