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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward formula. It commonly acts as a form of apology. We regret we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the biggest improvement is handed the prize. In reality, it sparks an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior coaching or merely the biggest surprise.

Yet the latest field is fundamentally unique. The pool of nominees is remarkably talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions declining and recent underperformers improving together. In an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's facing several other outstanding candidates.

This is how the ideal vote should shake out.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal environment, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his special ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that springs wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure big plays from nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a normal season, he would be the overwhelming choice. But this isn't a typical campaign!

Where his case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the leadership stuff, which was not a given after his initial public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. But Coen has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial hot start, there was a possibility that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still