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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward script. It often serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic turnaround wins the award. However, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or simply the biggest surprise.

However the current field is profoundly different. The group of candidates is remarkably deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners declining and recent also-rans ascending collectively. Under an normal season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and thrilling year, he's competing with multiple other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the hypothetical vote should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his special ability. From Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to create magic from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

During a ordinary season, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this is not a typical year!

The area where his candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. But he falls just short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the off-field aspects, which wasn't a given after his early public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. From the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

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

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just one spot ahead of peers.

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