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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward script. It often acts as a form of apology. Sorry we got wrong your squad in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who oversaw the biggest improvement wins the award. In reality, it fuels an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or just the most shocking surprise.

Yet the current field is fundamentally unique. The group of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division champions declining and recent also-rans rising together. During an ordinary year, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this chaotic and entertaining year, he's facing five other exceptional candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical vote should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters love QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady dose of play-action and a innovative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to create big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every decision – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the organization with the level of hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a ordinary season, he would be the runaway choice. Yet the current isn't a normal campaign!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for sustained winning. However he comes up just short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the off-field aspects, which was not a given after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the team wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year argument has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still