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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a simple formula. It often functions as a type of apology. Sorry we got wrong your franchise in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who engineered the biggest improvement is handed the award. However, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or merely the biggest shock.

But the current competition is fundamentally different. The group of candidates is exceptionally strong. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division champions falling away and longtime underperformers ascending in unison. Under an ordinary year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this chaotic and entertaining year, he's competing with several other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the ideal vote could look.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged excellence. Under Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to conjure magic from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Almost every decision – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a normal season, he would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet the current isn't a typical campaign!

The area where his case comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But Johnson falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has excelled at the off-field aspects, which wasn't a guarantee after his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching mix of youth and experience, he hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A midseason collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he simplified 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 Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are evident. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year case has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.

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