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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward script. It commonly serves as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the biggest improvement wins the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or merely the most shocking shock.

Yet the current field is distinctly different. The group of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions falling away and recent underperformers improving collectively. In an normal season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in this chaotic and fun season, he's up against five other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal ballot ought to look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent dominance. With his guidance, Williams has become more confident, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's vision: a physical ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when openings haven't been available, he's been able to conjure big plays from nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the organization with the kind of hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current is not a normal year!

Where his case comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However Johnson falls just short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a swift resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the off-field stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching mix of youth and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. But he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason setback had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He receives 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) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still