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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward formula. It often serves as a type of apology. Sorry we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the biggest improvement is handed the award. In reality, it fuels an annual debate about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or just the most shocking shock.

However this year's race is distinctly different. The pool of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference winners declining and recent underperformers ascending together. Under an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. But in such a chaotic and entertaining season, he's facing five other elite coaches.

Here is how the ideal vote should shake out.

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

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more confident, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than improvising. It is an offense built solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when openings haven't been available, he's been able to spin big plays from nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually each bet – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

In a typical season, he would be the runaway choice. But this isn't a typical year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term success. But Johnson falls short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which was not a given following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and all elements into sync.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run 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 outcomes are evident. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it made it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

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