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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often functions as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct path: the coach who engineered the largest turnaround receives the award. However, it sparks an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior coaching or just the most shocking surprise.

Yet the latest competition is distinctly different. The pool of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division winners falling away and longtime strugglers rising in unison. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. But in such a wild and thrilling season, he's competing with several other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his rare talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system instead of freelancing. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that springs wide-open targets consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to spin magic from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Almost each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

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

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. But he comes up just 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 dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has nailed the off-field stuff, which was not a given following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

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

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

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still