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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple formula. It frequently acts as a form of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the biggest turnaround receives the prize. However, it sparks an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or simply the greatest upset.

Yet this year's field is fundamentally different. The list of contenders is remarkably strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division champions declining and recent underperformers improving collectively. In an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a turbulent and thrilling season, he's facing five other elite candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his special talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a steady helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to create big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a ordinary year, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this is not a typical season!

The area where his candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. However he comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the leadership aspects, which was not a given following his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

After an early strong beginning, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still