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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a simple formula. It frequently acts as a type of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your squad in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct line: the skipper who orchestrated the largest improvement is handed the award. However, it fuels an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or just the greatest shock.

However this year's competition is distinctly different. The pool of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been messy, with reigning division winners falling away and longtime underperformers rising in unison. Under an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this chaotic and fun season, he's facing several other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the ideal vote ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right system, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to create big plays out of nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually every decision – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the organization with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a normal season, he would be the clear-cut favorite. But this is not a typical campaign!

The area where his case runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has nailed the leadership aspects, which wasn't a guarantee after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching mix of youth and experience, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

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

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

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just one spot ahead of peers.

Still