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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It frequently serves as a kind of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic turnaround receives the award. In reality, it fuels an annual debate about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or simply the biggest shock.

Yet the current race is profoundly unique. The group of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with recent division champions declining and recent underperformers rising together. During an normal year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this wild and entertaining season, he's facing multiple other elite candidates.

This is how the hypothetical ballot should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper system, the QB has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare ability. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to spin magic out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the building with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a normal year, he would be the runaway choice. Yet the current is not a typical season!

Where his candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. But Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has masterminded a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

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

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching blend of youth and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. From the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and all elements into sync.

After an early strong start, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed after that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still