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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple formula. It commonly acts as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the biggest improvement wins the award. In practice, it creates an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or simply the greatest surprise.

Yet the current race is fundamentally different. The pool of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division champions fading and longtime also-rans rising collectively. In an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. But in this turbulent and fun year, he's competing with several other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been given the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to spin magic from nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every bet – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the level of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current isn't a typical campaign!

Where Johnson's case runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership stuff, which was not a given after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching blend of youth and veteran savvy, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an early hot start, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still