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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward script. It commonly serves as a form of apology. Sorry we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who oversaw the most dramatic turnaround receives the prize. However, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or simply the biggest surprise.

However the current field is fundamentally unique. The group of candidates is remarkably deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions fading and recent strugglers rising collectively. During an typical season, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's up against five other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal ballot ought to be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love signal-callers. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his special ability. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of going rogue. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that springs wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to create magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the immense hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a normal year, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet the current is not a normal season!

Where his case runs a bit 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 notoriously unreliable. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for long-term winning. But he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which was not a given following his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and experience, he bet on newbies. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. But Coen has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an early hot beginning, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of peers.

Still