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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It often functions as a type of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your squad in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement receives the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or just the greatest shock.

Yet this year's race is fundamentally unique. The list of candidates is exceptionally deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning division winners declining and recent strugglers improving together. During an ordinary season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this chaotic and thrilling season, he's up against multiple other outstanding coaches.

This is how the ideal vote should be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his rare talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent performance. With his guidance, Williams has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an offense built solely in Johnson's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been able to conjure big plays out of nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the building with the level of hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this isn't a normal campaign!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. However he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles aspects, which was not a guarantee after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted newbies. From the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

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